Hoi] 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH8.5 



{_Whole Kumber W 

UNITED STATES BUREAU OF EDUCATION. 

i.PTER FROM THE REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF*EDUCATION 



For 1897-98. 



96 



Chapter XX. 



EDUCATION 



m 



JBA, PORTO RICO, AND THE 



PHILIPPINES. 



WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
18 99. 



««%^.^oti- 



\90^ 



Lfl 396 
.P2 
Copy 1 






CHAPTER XX. 

Duplicate. 
EDUCATION m CUBA, POETO EICO, AXD THE 

rHILlPPINES. 



Bv K. L. Packard. 



I. Cuba and Porto Kico. 

The statistics of the institutions of public instruction, anil those of 
]>iivate elen^entary schools, in Cuba, taken from ofiicial and other 
[authentic sources, are placed at the beginning of the following com- 
ipilation for the convenience of those who already know the history 
|and understand the general social condition of affairs in the island. 
To others they can have, however, little significance without knowledge 
of the colonial history and of the kind of instruction which is given in 
the institutions represented. To supply this information the statistical 
review is followed by a historical sketch of the relations between the 
colonies and Spain — the origin and growth of the separatist tendency — 
which is taken from a German authority, and this is followed by a his- 
tory of the educational, literary, and scientific movement in Cuba, from 
a Cuban source, together with plans of studies in the university and 
other institutions; then the testimony of competent judges as to the 
condition of education in the island at different periods from Humboldt's 
time down to 1890 is given, and a summary of the whole evidence con- 
cludes the paper. 

The educational system of the Spanish colonies has always been a 
subordinate part of that of the Peninsula, the same laws governing 
both, and the royal orders and decrees have so coordinated the two that 
the professorate in both has come to form essentially one body. The 
universities of the colonies were modeled upon the fiimous ones of Spain, 
and, until recently, education retained its aristocratic or university 
[character, no attention being paid to the general and public education 
of the masses. 

The educational system of Cuba consisted of the University of 
[Havana and institutes of secondary instruction (colleges and semiua- 
iries) in the capitals of the provinces and in Porto Eico. The rector of 
.the university was the immediate head of this system under the Captain- 
Fpeneral of the island, as representative of the King. Eoyal orders and 

909 



"o^* 010 



EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-08. 



decrees regula-ttd tlie conduct of education, ai)pointed teachers, created 
or cliaiigedtlie plan of studies, and uiauaged all the other details of the 
institutions of public iustruction, which alone could grant degrees. The 
degrees of the private institutions (colleges of the religious orders) 
required veritication before they could be accepted as valid and iden- 
tified with those of the public institutions. Degrees of the University 
of Havana were valid in Spain, and the degrees of bachelor of the sec- 
ondary institutions in Cuba and Porto Eico were sanctioned by the 
university. 

STATISTICS OF SUPERIOR AND SECONDARY INSTRUCTION. 

TIte university. — According to the annual report for 1S8S-S1) the 
Eoyal University had 1,04G students for that year, of whom 107 were 
inscaibed in the faculty of philosophy and letters j 187 in that of the 
natural sciences; 240 each in the law and medical faculties, and 214 in 
pharmacy. lu the three folloM'ing years there were 1,009, 1,059, and 
1,0S:>, respectively, showing little change. The expenditures for the 
first-named year were 120,859 pesos,' of which 121,209 pesos were for 
salaries and 5,050 pesos were for material. The income, largely from 
fees, was 77,038 pesos, leaving a deficit of 49,221 pesos. A full account 
of the university will be given below. 

By the law of 1880 an in.stitute of secondary instruction was 
established in the capital of each province, each of which comprises a 
number of colleges and seminaries in the vicinity. Thus the Institute 
of Ilavaua has 28 colleges incorporated under it; that of Matanzas, 8; 
that of Puerto Principe, 1; that of Santa Clara, 18; that of Pinar del 
Eio, 3, and that of Santiago de Cuba, 12. 

The following tables will show the details of attendance at these 
institutes by provinces.' The plan of studies will be given later on. 

Itistitiitf of' Haraiia. 



Tear. 



Students., degrees. 



186:: ' 66:! 

18C4-Gr. ' 76-t 

1805-1)6 ; 541 

1866-67 1 683 

188G-S7 ] , 80-1 



Year. 



1887-88 
1889-00 
1800-91 
lS!)l-92 



Students, degrees. 



1,752 
1,774 
1,956 
1,853 



204 
209 
24y 
253 



The superior normal school for male teachers, created in 1890, had 40 
students the first year and 42 in 1891-92 ; that for females had 85 students 
the first year and 173 in 1891-92. The '' professional" school of the 
island of Cuba (founded in 1855) had 43 students in 1890-91 aiul 51 

> Accorcling to Department Circular Ko. 54, issueil by tlie V. S. Treasury iril 1, 1898, the f'nb: n 
peso = $0,920. 

TromLaprimeraeiisen.iuzJien bi isbi de Cuba. Vor Josi- Estcb;hi l.iius. Secrotarbi .!<■ hi Junta 
Provincial do Instrucciou I'liblica dc- la Ilabana. Ibibana, 189:;. 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND POHTO RICO. 



1)11 



the next year. It gives business degrees to superinteudeiits cr over- 
seers and surveyors. The professional scliool of painting and sculpture 
of Havana liad an attendance as follows: 

1867 75 

1887-8S 502 

1890-'J1 431 

1891-92 too 

The plan of studies of this well-known school will be found in another 
place. The iiroviucial scliool for artisans had 11") students in the day 
school and 310 in the night school in 1890-91. 

A large number of "colleges of primary instruction" for boys and 
girls is given for the province of Havana by Senor Liras, but without 
statistics, and several charity schools are also mentioned. 

Nine Sunday schools for poor girls and servant girls, conducted by 
women, were established in 1882-1881, and have been attended by over 
5,000 young women since they were started, and have an attendance 
of from 30 to 100. 

Frovince of Matanzas. — The colleges in this i)rovince have been 
established for the most part since 1850, but the statistics for some of 
thera ceased with 1808, the year of the insurrection. 

The institute of Matanzas was created in 1803. T!ie attendance and 
degrees have been as follows: 



Tear. 



|Stndents.|Bagelar, 



1865-00 , 
1800-07 
1807-08 
1887-88 . 



238 
308 
226 





Tear. 


Students. 


Bachelor 
degrees. 


1890-91 .. 
1891-92 . . 
1892-93 .. 




367 
390 
371 
422 


51 
43 
40 


1893-94.. 




47 



Tlie expenditures were 13,050 pesos for salaries and 1,000 for material 
in the latter year; total, 14,050 pesos. There were 10 periodicals and 
newspapers in the province in 1891. 

Province of Santa Clara. — The institute was founded in 1882. Its 
activity is shown as follows : 



Year. 



students. 



1880-87 
1887-8S 
1889-90 
1890-91 



334 
S90 
329 
326 



Bachelor 
degrees. 



Year. 



IStudeuts, 



1891-92. 
1892-93 . 
1893-94 . 



331 
331 

339 



Bachelor 
degrees. 



The expenditures were 15,900 pesos, 14,900 for salaries and 1,000 for 
material. There were 30 periodicals, ranging from a medical and sci- 
entific journal down to newspai^ers, in the province. 

Province of Puerto Principe. — Besides several private colleges of 
secondary instruction, the institute proper was founded in 1803, and was 
supported by the State until recently, but is now maintained by the 
provincial authorities. 



912 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

its recent history is sho^rn by tlie following- table; 



Tear. 



1886-87 
1887-88 
1880-!J0 



Studeuta. 



113 
121 
143 



Bacbeloi- 
degrees. 



Tear. 



17 1890-91 
14 11891-92 

27 i 



Students. 



Bachelor 
decrees. 



144 
169 



The institutes of I'inar del Rio and Santiago de Cuba had 145 and 
255 students, respectively, in 1889-90 — the last date of which we have 
official reports. The bachelor degrees were 12 and 11 for that year. 
The institute of Porto Kico the same year had bachelor degrees con- 
tirmed by the universitv. 

riilMAEY EDUCATION. 

The following- statistics are taken from the pamphlets upon primary 
education in (3uba by Jose Estebau Liras, secretary of the proviiuMal 
junta of public instruction of Havana. ]*>ach i^amphlet is devoted to a 
sei)arate ])rovince, and gives the history of each school in the province, 
with statistics down to 1894, thus showing the development of ele- 
mentary edu<'ation. 

The publico schools have, for the most part, been established since 
the middle of this century, after the law of 1842 came into effect, which 
provided for inspection, and created provincial committees. In 1833 
the schools which had been established in the whole island, mainly 
through the eftbrts of the Sociedad Economica, were 210 for whites 
and 12 for colored, with an attendance of 8,460 whites and 486 colored, 
8,94<) in all. Of the white schools, 129 were for boys and 81 for girls, 
Avhile the schools for the colored were equally divided. The total 
amount allotted for public instruction was 40.499 pesos. Normal 
schools were established after 1850, and by 1858 the appropriation from 
municipal funds for primary instruction was 156,910 pesos. In 1867 
there were 752 public and 532 private schools, with an attendance of 
27,780. The public schools cost then 596,922 pesos. The insurrection 
of 1868 interfered seriously with education, and a great number of 
schools were closed. 

It will be seen from the preceding tables relating to secondary edu- 
cation, and also from those that follow relating to elementary schools, 
that there is a hiatus from 1867 to 1887, the former date just preceding 
the ten-year insurrection. 

The totals showing the population, the number of primary schools, 
and the attendance, together with an analysis of the census figures 
showing the percentage of whites and the illiteracy, are here given. 
For details of statistics by provinces the reader is referred to the tables 
below. In 1894 the population, total number of public and private 
schools, and their attendance, in the four provinces of Havana, Matan- 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 



913 



zas, Puerto Principe, and Santa Clara were as follows (the figures for 
Havana were those of 1893) : 

Population 1, 175, 000 

Public and private schools 1, 255 

Attendance 47, 752 

There was an increase from 1887 to 1894, as the following will show: 



1887. 



1894. 



PopiTlalion 

Number of schools. 
Attendauce 



1, 100, 222 

963 

36, 467 



1, 175, 000 

1,255 

47, 752 



In the province of Havana in 1893 74.55 per cent of the population 
were white and 5.83 per cent of the entire population were receiving 
elementary instruction. 

In the province of Matanzas in 1887, the latest date for which there 
are available figures, the whites were 55 per cent of the population, 
and GO per cent of the white and 93 per cent of the colored population 
could neither read nor write. 

In the province of Puerto Principe the whites formed 80 per cent of 
the population in 1887. Over 50 per cent of the white and 70 per cent 
of the colored population could not read nor write in 1894. 

In the province of Santa Clara 69 per cent of the population was 
white in 1887, and about 72 per cent of the whites and 90 per cent of 
the blacks could neither read nor write. 

The following statistical tables of primary instruction in the dili'erent provinces- 
are taken from the authority referred to above (Liras) : 

Prorince of Havana, population in 1S93. 



Male. 



White (native) ! 191, 758 

Colored 50, 960 

(Chinese 5, 543 

Foreigners 2, 448 



Female. 



149, 094 

55, 693 

41 

1,587 



Total. 



340,852 

106, 653 

5, 584 

4, 035 



Total 250,709 j 206,415 l 457,124 

It results from this that 74.55 per cent of the population iu 1893 were white, 23.36 
per cent colored, 1.23 per cent Chinese, and 0.86 per cent foreigners. Also 54 per 
cent were males, but a larger proportion of the native whites were males (56 per 
cent) than the blacks (47 per cent), while 99 per cent of the Chinese and 61 per cent 
of the foreigners were of that sex, they being away from their natural habitats. 

The statistics of primary schools show as regards number: 







Public schools. 


Private schools. 


Public and private. 




1807. 


1887. 


1893. 


1867. 1887. 1893. 


1867. 


1887. 


1893. 


For bovs 




74 
66 


107 

82 


107 
91 
11 


50 125 140 
78 ' 83 ! 190 

2 21 t 16 


124 

144 

2 


232 

165 

21 


247 

281 

97 


For girls 

For both sexes 














Total 


140 


189 1 209 


130 229 ; 346 


270 


418 


555 


ED 98— 


—58 

















014 



EDUCATION REPOi^^T, 18;>7-9K. 



Tliove waS; tlieiefure, one sclioul to every 1,455 inhabitants in InGT, one to 1,080 in 
1887, and one to 824 in 1893. 

There were 214 teac-hcrs iu the public schools, 113 being males and 101 females. 
Seven were under 20 years of age ; 97 were between 20 and 40 ; 88 between 40 and 60, 
and 22 were over 85, and they received salaries varying iVom 1,500 to 300 ]iesos, only 
2 receiving the former and 42 the latter. 

The attendance was as follows: 



Public schools. 



1867. 



1887. 



I'rlvato schools. 

1807. I 1887. ' 189a. 



"VTliite: 

Bova ! 5,083! 3,005 

Girls ! 2, 915 i 2, 801 

Colored : I 

I50TS 1 , 023 

Girls ; 810 



4, 3;i6 
3.036 



1,003 
1,080 



2, 407 
1.291 



2,987 
2,628 



180 1 
120 



722 
660 



4,614 
5,700 



1,152 
1,401 



Total ! 8,028 8,719 9,455 1 4, 094 t 6,997 1 I2,95T 



These tables show that the- total number of pnpila in lfc)!)3 in the public and private 
schools of the province was 22,412. It also appears that there was 1 pupil to every 
32 inhabitants in 1867; 1 to every 28 in 1887, and 1 to every 20 in 1893. 15ut iu the 
public schools alone there was 1 pupil to 48 inhabitants iu 1867; 1 to 51 iu 1887, and 
1 to 48 in 1893. The tables show also that 2.07 per cent of the population of the 
pi'ovince attended the primary public schools and 2.83 per cent the private, and 
that 4.90 per cent of the poi»ulation received primary instruction. A school census 
of children up to 10 years lor 1893 shows that the white boys Averc more numerous 
than the girls, being 23,326 to 21,844, while the colored wore 8,121 boys to 8,260 girls. 

The total expense for public ]irimary education iu 1S93 wa.s 207,6!!6 pesos, which 
was at the rate of about 22 pesos per pupil. 

A general summary of primary instruction for the province of Havana is sliown 
in this table : 



1887 



PopuLifion ! 302,975 451,528 

Number of schools I 270 418 

I'upila i 12,li;2 ; 15,710 

ICxpoiiscs (pesos) , 1 179, (!97 



1893. 



457, 124 

555 

a 26, 732 

207, 000 



nTnoliiflcs 4,320 (lomostie pnpils. 

I'rorincc of Mutavzax — ropiilation. 

1867 194, 595 

1887 259, 508 

189! 265, 025 



In 1S77 the whites were 49 per cent and in 1887 55 per rent of the population, and 
the males were 57 per cent. In 1887 5 per cent of the whites could read only, aud 
35 per cent could both read and write. Of the colored iiopulation 1 per cent could 
read only, and 6 per cent could both read and write; so that 60 per cent of the 
white and 93 per cent of the colored could neither read nor write. 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND POKTO EICO. 
Tlie fuIloAviiig tabic gives the number of schools iii 1887 and 1894. 



915 





Public ..choola. Private schools. f^^pfS. 




1887. 1894. 1887. j 1894. 1887. 1 1894. 


Bov.« 


CO 75 44 25 123 ' 112 


Girls 


49 ! 53 71 34 129 !>9 


Both .ss-XL'.s 


19 1 24 J 1 ! 58 1 58 


Total 


137 j 152 110 j 117 253 j 269 



Tbcro vreve 156 teacbers for tbe l.")2 public schools, witli salaries ranging from 
1,200 pesos to 150 pesos. There Tvere 5,652 pupils in the public schools — 3,442 boys 
and 2,210 girls — and 4,416 pupils in the 117 private ."schools — 2,236 boys and 2,180 
girls — making 10,068 in both. This makes 1 public school to 1,743 people, and 1 
private school to 2,265 people. There Avas 1 pupil in the X'H^'^'C schools to 47 
inhabitants. 

SUMISIAKY. 



Popnlation 259, 508 

Nninbcr of schools 253 

Pnpils 9, 075 

Expenses (pesos) ' 110, 262 



1894. 



2G5, 025 

269 

10,068 

133,514 



ri'orhice of Puerto rrindpe — Popuhdlon, 





1867. 


1877. 


1887. 


1894. 


"Whiti'S 


ns 556 


56, 781 
12, 464 


54,231 
13, 558 




Colored 


23, 871 








Total 


62, 427 


69, 245 


67,789 


69 061 







The Avhites vrere 61 jier cent nf the popuhition iu 1867, 82 per cent in 1877, and 
80 per cent iu 1887. The males predominated, being .V) per cent in 1867, 63 per cent 
in 1877, and 53 jier cent in 1887. 

The public elementary schools were as fullows: 





1367. 


1887. 


1694. 


BoVR 




17 
15 


20 


Girls 


17 


Both sexes 


4 








Total 


25 i 

1 


32 


41 







Or 1 public school to 2,501 people in 1867; 1 to 2,118 in 1887; 1 to 1,684 in 1894. 
The private schools at the same periods viere : 





1867. 


1887. 


1894. 


Bov.s 


12 
9 


27 


2 


GirLs 


7 


Both sexes 


26 








Tot.ll 


21 


34 


35 







916 



EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 



Or 1 privcate school to 1,359 people in 1867; 1 to 1,027 in 1887; 1 to 908 in 1894. 
There were 42 teachers for the 41 public schools in 1894, vrith salaries from 1,500 
pesos (1 teacher) down to 300 pesos (with 16 teachers). 
The attendance was : 



Boys 
Gii-ls 



1867 



1,095 
277 



1887. 



1,032 
158 



Total 1,372 1,190 



1894. 



086 
801 



1,787 



Or 1 pupil to 45 inhabitants in 1867; 1 to 56 in 1887; 1 to 37 in 1894. 
The private schools Avere as follows: 



Boys 
Girls 



397 
148 



1887. 



277 
320 



Total . 



545 



597 



281 

507 



788 



Or 1 private school pupil to 114 people in 1867; 1 to 113 in 1887; 1 to 86 in 1894. 

In 1894 the attendance was : 

In the public schools 1, 787 

In the private schools 788 

Total 2,575 

Therefore 2.58 per cent of the population were educated in the jiublic and 1.14 per 
cent in the ])rivate schools — 3.72 per cent in all. Over r>0 per cent of the white and 
70 per cent of the colored population can neither read nor write. The expenses of 
the public schools in 1894 were 33,548 pesos, so that each pupil cost 18 pesos, and each 
school 818 pesos. 

The summary shows as follows: 



Population 

Number of schools . 
Pi 



ipils 



Expenses (pesos) , 



1867. 1887. 



62, 527 

46 

1,917 



67, 789 

66 

1,787 

27, 829 



1894. 



69, 061 

76 

2,575 

33, 548 



Province of Santa Clara. 

The history of primary education in this province may be said to have begnn as 

soon as Velasquez founded the cities of Sancti .Spiritus and Trinidad, because Barto- 

lome de las Casas took part in the founding of Trinidad, and he was among the first 

to instruct the young Indians. But the church instruction was a dift'erent thing 

from secular education, the beginning of which may be put at 1712 in this province, 

as will be related in its place. 

PopulatloH. 





1867. 


1877. 


1887. 


1894. 


WhitPS ... 


186, 297 
102, 830 


205, 694 
115,703 


244. 344 
109, 778 












Total 


289, 127 


321, 397 


354, 122 


383, 790 







EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 



917 



lu 1867 64 per cent of the population were A\lute; iu 1877, 64 per cent, and in 1887, 
69 per cent. The males were 56, 57, and 55 per cent for the same years. In 1887 2 per 
cent of the whites and 1.65 per cent of the blacks conld read only, and 27.75 per cent 
of the whites and 10.52 per cent of the blacks could both read and write. 

Public schools. 





1867. 


1887. 


1894. 




50 
23 


123 
54 


121 


Girls 


72 


Both sexea 


21 










Total 


73 


177 


214 







There was, therefore, 1 public school to 3.960 inhabitants iu 1867, 1 to 3,026 iu 
1887, 1 to 1,793 iul894. 

rrivate schools. 



Boys 

Girls 

Both sexes . 

Total . 



1867. 



28 



There was 1 private school to 10,290 persons iu 1867, 1 to 3,824 in 1887, 1 to 2,721 
in 1894. 

I'uhlic and private schools. 



Boys 

Girl.8 

Both sexes . 

Total . 



158 

108 

3 



269 



174 
140 
41 



There were 215 teachers for the 214 public schools, 132 uiale and 83 female, and 
their salaries ranged from 1,200 to 300 pesos. The public schools were attended by 
4,694 boys and 3,395 girls, 8,089 iu all, and the private by 2,279 boys and 2,329 girls, 
4,608 iu all, makiug a total attendance of 12,697 pupils. This makes 1 pupil in 
the public schools to 47 persons, and in the jjrivate 1 to 83 persons. The total 
expenses for the public schools were 150,644 pesos, so that each pupil cost 19 pesos, 
and each inhabitant was indebted 2.50 pesos for the public schools. 

SUMMAK?— PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



Populfition 

Number of schools. . . 

Attendance 

Expenditures (pesos) 




918 



EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 



The only statistics avuilabio for tlie two remaining provinces, I'iuar del Kio and 
Santiago de Cuba^ are from the Annario of the Real IJ'niversidad, and arc fortbc year 
1888-89. Tliey are as follows : 





Total 
popula- 
tion. 


Schools. 


Attendance. j Total 




Public. 


Private. Total. 


Public. 


Private. 


Total. ! itures. 




271,010 


110 


76 i 186 
26 j 100 


6,031 
3,505 


1,837 
733 


1 Pesos. 
7,868 : 82,596 




229, 761 


134 


4,297 1 77,636 









PORTO RICO. 

Edncatiou of all kinds was greatly neglected in Torto Ivico until 
1837, many of the towns being without even a primary school, but 
since the institution of the provincial committees on primary instruc- 
tion in that year (incorporated in the lioyal Academy of Belles Lettres 
in 1851) much i)rogress has been made. In 18G1 there was a public 
school ill everj^ town, besides private ones in those of the first and 
second class. The city of San Juan had in 18G1 six public and four 
private schools, four of the fir.st for girls and two for boys, and of the 
last, two for each sex, besides a seminary, founded in 1831, with three 
prolessor.ships proper to the institution, and those of the French and 
English languages, mathematics, and design, which are supported by the 
Sociedad Econoraica de Amigos de Pais. According to a statement of 
the academy in 1852, the schools of the island were attended hy 2,081 
scholars. A large number of the boys were (1861) sent to Europe and 
the United States for education. The young Creoles are exceedingly 
apt scholar.?, and very few attain manhood without a knowledge of read- 
ing, writing, and arithmetic, as, unfortunately, despising mechanical 
pursuits, their great aim is to qualify themselves for clerkships. The 
education of the females was, until 18G1, much less attended to, and 
many could not write.' But in 1878-79 only 5,200 pesos were in the 
estimates for public instruction in the island, and in 1887 only about 14 
per cent of the population could read and write. In 1800 the popula- 
tion was 810,394, with 350,000 whites. 

We are fortunate in being able to secure the following more recent 
information from Mr. F. A. Ober, a gentleman who has made a study of 
the West Indies, and v.'hose vrritings, giving the results of his ethno- 
logical and historical studies, are well known. 

From a text-book upon the geography of the island, by Don Manuel 
Quiniana y Corton, 1870, he quotes that there were in that year 3G3 
primary schools in the isKaud, attended by 12,144 pupils of both sexes, 
250 of which were for boys and 107 for girls. (The population was then 
about 700,000, more than half of whom were white.) Education was 
compulsory and gratuitous for i)oor children, who were supplied with 

• The Spanish West Indies, Cuba and Porto Rico, from the Spanish of Don J. M. 
do la Torre (Porto Rico, by .1. T. O'Neill), hy Richard Swaynson Fisher. [New 
York, 1861.] 



EDUCATION IN ('UI!A AND POKTO Rli'O. ItlO 

books, etc. From a work by a Spanish officer, Don Manuel Ubeda y 
Delgado, iipou tbe history, geography, and statistics of the island, 
published iu 1878. in Porto Eico, lie takes the estimate for that year, 
which was 5,200 pesos out of 287,522 pesos for xuiblic works (fomento), 
and then quotes as follows : 

The a(lvautag<\s of Torto liico (as to education) arc not ei|iial to those oflVrod 
elsewhere in countries more civilized, because we lack colleges and iustitutious of 
instruction of liitilier grade. The total lack of universities, institutes, and academies 
ohliges fathers who desire to give their sons an education (daughters not considered) 
to send tlieni to the Peninsula (Spain) and foreign countries, not that there are not 
good professors here of mathematics, languages, music, etc., but they are not numer- 
ous; still, by means of periodicals, standard works, eti-., one may acquire a great 
deal that is attainable in more popular centers. 

There is at present in construction a building in which will be installed the college 
of secondary iustruction, directed by the Jesuit professors. This establishment is 
the only one of its class in the island, but fortunately it has given excellent results 
since (according to one of the professors) those who obtain its degree of bachelor of 
arts may rank with the best of those who enter the universities. The studies are 
distributed iu five courses, or years, as follows: 

First oourse. — Latin and Spanish grammar; Christian ductiiiie and sacred history; 
principles of and exercises in arithmetic. 

Second coitrs''. — Latin and Spanish grammar; notio?is of d<seiipti\e geography; 
principles of and exercises in geometry. 

Til ird course. — Exercises in analyzing and Latin trauslatiou; rudiments of Creek; 
notions of general history; arithmetic and algebra. 

Fourfit course. — Elements of rhetoric and poetry, M'ith exercises iu comparison of 
select pieces, Latin and Spanish, and iu I^atin and Spanish eomjiosition; exercises in 
Greek translation; history of Spain; elements of geometry and plane trigonometry, 

FifiJi course. — Psychology, logic, moral philosophy: elements of jihysics and chem- 
istry; outlines of natural history. 

Having completed these proscribed studies, including a course iu French, in what- 
ever year desired, students obtain the degree of bachelor of arts. 

There is also a preparatory course for students of the first jear. The average 
number of pupils examined for entrance is 1?:^, of which number about 123 are 
approved and 50 rejected. The average number of graduates with the degree of 
bachelor is 1.5. About one-third the stiulents, more or less, are residents and two- 
thirds from the outside. The Jesuits also conduct a seminary, with an average 
attcj'dance of 8 scholars. 

There is also an athenaeum, which occasionally holds public debates, scientific and 
literary, with gratuitous classes for its members. 

There are also iu the capital (Sau Juan) 23 schools, with an average attendance of 
1,107 pupils, divided as follows: One superior for boys and 1 for girls; 4 elementary 
for boys and 4 for girls; 3 pri^-ate for lioys and 3 for girls, and 1 for adults; 2 pri- 
mary schools [besides 6 in the suburbs. The estimates were 18,244 pesos in 1878]. 

In the capital also we find several charitable institutions where gratuitous instruc- 
tion is given, notably (1) the Casa de Eeueficeucia, constructed in 1841-1847 with 
donations from the people of the province, and which gives asylum to an average 
nnmber of 140 boys and 120 girls, who are given primary instruction as well as taught 
music, and for whom there are workshops in which they are taught shoemaking, 
carpenter work, tailoring, and cigar making for boys, and needle work, washing, etc., 
for the girls, under the direction of eighteen Sisters of Charity. 

(2) The College of San Ildefonso, erected by the charitable efforts of benevolent 
bodies, occupies a vast edifice, in which poor ]girls to the number of 36 are educated 
up to the age of 20 years, and there is room for 21: boarders besides outside schidars, 



920 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

all uuder the direction of the Sisters of Charity. Under their guidance also is 
the school for infants, in which an average number of 150 children of both sexes are 
instructed, the age limit being from three to seven years. 

There is also a military school with the Captain- General as director, and the chiet 
of battalion occupying the barracks as subdirector. 

Ill 1879 eleven papers were published iii the island. The island is 
divided into seven departments besides the capital, and the total num- 
ber of schools for these in 1878 was 271 for bo3^s and 103 for girls — the 
attendance is not given — with an allowance in the estimates of 30,882 
pesos. ' 

There is a scientitic and literary society in Ponce and another in 
Mayagiiez, where there is a public library of 756 volumes. Mr. Ober 
gives estimates for education for 1894-95 and 1896-97, which included 
the institute, normal school, the atheneum of Porto Rico and lyceum of 
Mayagiiez, amounting to 63,966 pesos in the former year and 69,776 
in the latter, but primary education does not appear in the list. 

Elementary instrnciion in Porto Rico. — The latest statistics of the 
elementary schools of Porto Kico are those for 1898, prepared by Dr. 
Carbonell, secretary of "■ Fomento,'' of the island, and obtained through 
the kindness of Prof. Mark W. Harrington.' 

These statistics are as follows : 

Xitmher of schools. 

Northern district: 

Public schools 258 

Private schools 28 

Southern district: 

Public schools 252 

Private schools 16 

Total 554 



' The same gentleman has furnished the Bureau of Education with a proposed plan 
of studies which was submitted to the " representative of public instruction of the 
United States in Porto Rico '' by Senor Miguel Rodrig Sierra, the .irgumeut for which 
sets ibrth the previous deplorable condition of the schools and teachers in that island. 
The latter had no due respect or social position and were not free agents to develop 
their schools. The government was tyrannical and the administration torpid. The 
teachers were without protection, the scho(ds without supervision, without books 
and scientific material suited to their needs. The preamble contains this curious 
appeal: "And we, the teachers of all periods; we who have consecrated our youth 
to the service of the great cause of teaching; we who have lost our time in dedicat- 
ing it to great things under a corrupt system; we, in short, who, for love of our 
neighbor and solely for the country which gave us birth, have succeeded in supple- 
menting by our earnestness the deficiencies of the system, are worthy and deserve, 
if the new Government wishes to do justly, to be conceded liberty in the teachers' 
chair and to be permitted to teach from texts selected by us freely. The American 
Government should concede to us all that is necessary, as directors of childhood aud 
youth in Porto Rico, to form citizens worthy of the respect of the sons of Washington, 
among whom we now number ourselves." 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 



921 



Attendance. 



Northern district : 

Boys 9, 942 

Girls 6,457 

Southern district: 

Boys 9,132 

Girls 4,207 

Total attendance 27,936 

Cost. 

Pesos. 

Northern district 167,347 

Southern district 164,020 



Total, in Porto Rican money '331, 367 



Northern district: 
Boys 



Children of school a>je. 



- 31,141 

Girls 29,649 

Southern district: 

Boys 34, 224 

Girls 30,681 



Total of school age 125, 695 

Total attendance 27, 938 



Cliildren without schools 93, 757 

The following interesting- table shows the growth of elementary 
instruction in Porto llico from 1864 to 1881, and is taken from the 
report of the secretary of the governor-general to the minister, made in 
the latter year, which is published in the CompiIaci('»n Legislativa de 
Primera Ensenanza de la Isla de Puerto Kico, by D. Juan Macho Moreno 
(Madrid, 189r)), a work which contains everything relating to the laws, 
regulations, programmes, forms, etc., of elementary education in the 
island. 

It will appear from these statistics that the increase in the number 
of schools was insignificant from 1807 to 1878, but from that date to 
1881 it was rapid. 



Date. 


Public si^hools. 


Attendance. 


Expeiiditiircs. 


Boys'. 


Girls'. 


Total. 


Boys. 


Gills. Total. 


Personal. 


Mateiial. ' Total. 


1864 


74 
240 
246 
238 
328 
372 
384 


48 
56 
67 
91 
104 
112 
117 


122 
296 
313 
329 
432 
484 
501 


2,396 
7,543 
6,192 
7,523 
10, 73C 
18, 025 
18, 025 


1,092 
1,929 
1,937 
3.474 
4,482 
0, 095 
6,095 


3,488 
9, 472 
8,129 
11,097 
15,218 
24, 120 
24, 120 


Pesos. 

35, 542 

90, 834 

88, 133 

103, 078 

142, 454 

181, 334 

191, 424 


Pesos. Pesos. 
1, 535 36, 857 
90 834 


1867 


1869 


88', 133 

26, 378 129, 456 
48, 704 191, ir.8 
70,621 256,955 
71, 245 262, 669 


1878 


1880 


June, 1881 

July, 1881 



From the same work we take a few specimens of subjects of examina- 
tion programmes for teachers of elementary schools, to show the quality 

' The Porto Rican peso is equal to 65 cents in United States money. 



022 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

and scope of tlie preparation required. Passing over tlic programme 
on Christian doctrine and sacred history, those upon pedagogics, 
grammar, geography, arithmetic, history and physics, agriculture, 
industry and commerce, calligraphy, and orthology are all very fall. 
For example, in morals instruction is to be given in the folIo^ying 
subjects. Only a very few examples are taken out of many: 

20. Obligations of man to Lis body and persGn ; self-defeuse; immorality of suicide. 

21. Obligations of man to work; evils of idleness. What are temperance, sobriety, 
cliastity, and the opposite vices? 

22. Duties of mei\ to each other j obedience; benevolence. 

23. Obligations to one's C(£uals: nrbanity, gratitude, fulfillment of proiuiaos, 
25. Obligations to aid our fellow-creatures. 

27. The duty of iiardoning injuries; immorality of liate and vengeance. 

In pedagogics the teacher is examined, among other things, as to — 

30. Importance of attention; methods of awalcening and maintaining it. The 
•will, freedom, moral sentiments, moral science. Instincts, passions, good habits; 
pernicious elTects of scandal upon the pupils. 

There are several sections upon methods. 

In algebra the subjects embrace equations of .second degree, pro- 
portion, roots, logarithms, etc. 

In the applications of geometry are surveying and surveying instru- 
ments. 

In drawing there is the use of the .^cale, and manj'- examples in the 
diflereut orders of architecture, and in physics such subjects as — 

11. Gases; atmospheric air: its jihysical properties; how it is shown to have 
weight; the barometer; Magdeburg hemispheres. 

14. Molecular adhesion of solids and liquids; caj)illarity; the more common 
phenomena due to cai)illarity ; eudosmosis and exosmosis. 

20. Light: hypotheses for explaining its nature; propagation, velocity, and inten- 
sity of light; photometers. 

21. Refraction of light; its laws; phenomena dependent upon it; prisms and 
lenses; division of lenses by their curvature, and effects they produce with the 
luminous body in diflerent positions. 

29. Object of chemistry; chemical classification of bodies; analysis and syn- 
thesis; reagents; combinations and mixtures; affinity; composition of the air; 
Lavoisier's experiments on air. 

30. Extraction of gold and silver. 

These examples are sufficient to show the grade of questions asked. 
The programmes were published as late as 1893. 

inSTOEICAL SKETCH. 

The preceding ligures, as remarked at the outset, are unintelligible 
unless we know the social and political condition of the countrj' as an 
outgrowth of its history, and we proceed to give the latter. 

The same men who conquered Mexico and Peru settled Cuba and 
Porto Eico. Indeed, Cortes engaged his men in Cuba and took ship 
there for the mainland, and that island "has," as Humboldt says, "a 



EDUCATION IN (TBA AND PORTO RTCO. 923 

cliaiia that is wanting to the greater part of the isew ^Vorltl. It pre- 
sents remembrances linked with the greatest names of the Spanish 
monarchy, those of Christopher Cohimbus and Hernando Cortes." It 
is curious to inquire what manner of men they were who, althongli a 
mere handful, ventured almost without hesitation to explore and con- 
quer vast unknown countries. AVe observe the contrast between the 
Spanish conquistadores, the utterly bold, determined, large-minded 
adventurers, and the English and Dutch colonists of the next centurj' 
on the nortliern seaboard. These latter had little of the conquering 
spirit about them. They left their native country to better themselves 
in a quiet way and to trade, and their ideas were principally limited to 
the unand)itious parts tliey had to play. Their natural leaders stayed 
at borne to attend to the promoting and financiering of the colonial 
interests instead of leading exploring parties in the wilderness. This con- 
trast crops out in many ways. (lovernorWinthrop wanders three or four 
miles away from his companions and passes an anxious night alone in 
the hut of a friendly Indian. A hundred years before, a Spanish monk 
thought nothing of undertaking an expedition of a thousand miles in a 
wild country abounding in savages, and the English never undertook 
anj' such expedition as Coronado's march. They were not explorers 
but settlers, and only moved inland, as time went on, by a process of 
extrusion — by the same r/.s a fcvf/o which drove them from Europe — 
so it came about that all the southwestern jxirt of the United States 
received Spanish names as the Northwest was named by the other 
exjdoring nation, the French. After three centuries the requirements 
of a political situation stirred up the descendants of the British colo- 
nists to conquest, and they promptly dispossessed the Mexicans of their 
broad territories, and then the discovery of gold in California awakened 
the anrl sacra fames which led them in hordes to the Paciiic coast in 
the congenial search for sudden wealth. There was, however, one point 
of resemblance between the Spaniards of the sixteenth century and the 
English of the seventeenth. Both felt a responsibility for the lost souls 
they fancied they had found, and were zealous for the conversion and, 
incidentally, the education of the Indians. Wlierever the Spaniards 
went they carried the university with them, iSTo matter how narrow 
and perverted the education of the monks may have been, there was 
still in it a reminiscence of the humanities, if in nothing else than the 
monkish Latin the^' used, and some of the conquistadores themselves 
were imbued with letters. Even the private soldier Bernal Diaz was 
able to write his recollections of the mighty deeds he had witnessed, 
and he left an account which historians have used as an authoritative 
document. Like superiority of birth, superior education gave (as it 
still gives) an intellectual superiority of view, which was due to the 
European university, whose root fibers, when traced, will be found to 
penetrate that buried civilization from which all modern civilization 
has sprung, which once dominated the world with grandeur and 



924 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

magnificence, and yet filled it with beauty and taste. The humani- 
ties give a culture for which no modern innovation, such as exclusively 
scientific studies, which are purely objective and mechanical in their 
essence, and therefore not tending to culture, can ever be a substitute; 
and it is perversion to regard such an abstraction as "science" as a 
new Muse, instead of the laborious handmaid of civilization, which 
she really is. So wherever the Spaniards came they brought culture, 
and it is interesting to note that to them this continent owes its first 
universities and first printing presses. Printing was done in Mexico 
a century before it was introduced into Xew England, and even in 
far-off Manila a history of the martyrdom of certain missionaries was 
printed at the College of San Tomas in 1634, six years before the 
lirinting press was set up at Harvard. The university at Lima is 
eighty years older than Harvard. This culture, corrupted as it was 
by monkish narrowness, resulted in time, after the institutions had 
become multii)lied, in turning out scholars, historians, poets, statesmen, 
generals, and presidents of republics, of the native races, besides 
scientific writers who have made original investigations of the geol- 
ogy, botany, and mineralogy of their countries. The English, too, 
in the next century, brought the university with them, and English 
Cambridge supplied a hierarchy of culture which kept the colony out 
of barbarism. The university redeemed the English colonies, and the 
democratizing and equalizing public-school systems came later. The 
most original work of the seventeenth century in New England, Eliot's 
Indian Bible, Avas a child of Cambridge, and its existence was due to 
the same missionary spirit that actuated the Spanish monks and the 
Spanish kings, whose peremptory orders to the settlers to care tenderly 
for the Indians, treat them kindly, educate them, and convert them to 
the Catholic faith i*eappear in royal letter after letter. The English, like 
the Spaniards, showed a solicitude for the welfare of the souls of the 
natives, but it was manifested on a smaller scale, corresponding with 
the difference in magnitude between the Spanish conquest and the 
early English emigration. 

As was remarked at the outset, it is important to know the anteced- 
ents of a population in which an educational system is established, and 
it is therefore worth while to give a summary of the political history 
of the Spanish colonies, and so obtain an idea of the character of the 
colonists, in order to understand the material upon which education 
has had to work. A summary of the kind desired is given by Ferd. 
Blumentritt, the (ierman ethnologist, In an article upon the history 
of the separatist tendency (Separatismus) in the Spanish colonies, in 
the Deutsche Rundschau for July, 1898, which is of especial interest, 
as it gives particulars of the character and motives of the earliest 
emigrants to the Spanish colonies which are not brought out in the 
commonly known histories of the conquest. The article was written 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO KICO. 925 

before the events of 1898 deprived Spain of the last of her colonies; 
and the author says: 

The names of Columbus, Balboa, Cortez, Pizarro, and Magellan are well known to 
all. Who of us when a boy <lid not read of the adventures and heroic deeds of the 
conquistadores and also of the cruelties they iutlicted upon the natives of the New 
World? From these youthful recollections, and from the influence of the news- 
papers — often partisan and often misinformed — comes the judgment of the educated 
IJortiou of our people upon the Spanish colonial relations, a judgment that amounts 
more or less to this: That the Spaniards, by their "devilish cruelty," have brought 
the inhaldtants of their colonies to despair and revolt. Others see in the financial 
exploiting of the colonies by the mother country, or in the rapacity and dishonesty 
of the Si^anish officials, the ground and inducement for a war of separation. Much 
in these views is erroneous, but one feature of them, even if not directly expressed, 
is true, namely, that only the Spaniards themselves are to blame for the efforts of 
the colonists to become independent of the mother kingdom. If one is inclined to 
regard this severe charge against Spain as unjust, let him answer the (juestiou: 
Why is it that it is only in Spanish colonies that separation finds .so many support- 
ers? And this further question : How is it that the desire for independence is found 
in such widely separated countries with such different organizations and popula- 
tions as New Spain, South America, the Antilles, and the Philippines, manifesting 
itself in the suicidal fanaticism of white, yellow, brown, and black insurgents all 
over the Spanish colonial empire from the earliest times until now? The various 
colonies never had the same social organization, nor were they in the same economi- 
cal or political conditions. In Mexico, Pern, and New Granada there were Indian 
farmers in the highlands and negroes on the coast. In Venezuela there were the 
region of plantations, where negroes predominated, and the llanos where the mixed 
race of the Llaneros ruled the steppes. The La Plata country had its Gauchos; the 
Antilles were the best representatives of the plantation system; while the Philip- 
l^ines had their Malay and Chinese mixed bloods, governed by Spanish religious 
orders — a variegated picture of different races and social organizations — and yet 
from all has come the same cry : " Out with the Spaniards! Freedom from Spain !" 
It is therefore clear that the seed of sejiaration was carried from Spain to her colo- 
nies, and that not recently either, but juore than three hundred j-^ears ago. For it 
was not the example of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of 
America that started the idea of separation among the Spanish colonies, although 
this example of the Anglo-Americans was a powerful aid, but the idea was already 
present. Spanish separation is not the result of the wicked example of the Yankees, 
but is the consequence of a process continuing through several hundred years, which 
we will trace from its beginning in the following sketch : 

When the Spaniards settled the Greater Antilles and also established colonies on 
the mainland, in 1493-1520, the Government had only drawn the outlines of the rela- 
tions between the new settlements and the mother country, allowing the settlors 
themselves the greatest liberty. Spanish cities were founded on American soil by 
Spanish citizens, who transplanted to the New World the free municipal constitutions 
of their native laud. The citizens elected their rejiresentative city governments 
and officers (alcaldes, mayores), just as they had done iu Spain, and their privileges 
as independent cities were confirmed by the King. A feudal nobility arose iu the 
midst of the ])lains, where the Indian villages were divided among the conquerors 
as fiefs (encomiendas), and a title of nobility often went with these fiefs like, e. g., 
that of Marijues del Valle, which was given to Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico. By 
the great emigration to the New World the population of Spain was notably decreased, 
although not to so great an extent as is stated in some works, and yet the Govern- 
ment of Castile made no objection to the jiriuciple of emigration. I speak of the 



926 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

Goverumcnt of Castilo because the crowns of the two Spanish empires, Castile and 
Aragon, were not united upon one liead (that of the Emperor Charles V) nntil 151G. 
The Castilian Covernment took the position that only subjects of CastDc should be 
allowed to settle in the New World, and even this permission had exceptions, for 
emigration was strictly forbidden to converts from Judaism and Mohammedanism 
and to ail persons who had been punished by the Inquisition and their descendants. 
All these restrictions, however, were more or less evaded, for we find foreigners in 
tbe lists of the conqiierors, who mnst, therefore, either have been naturalized as Cas- 
tilian citizens (as was the case with Magellan, for example) or they were permitted 
to go by tlie Government, which, indeed, sometimes took them into its own service, of 
■which there are numerous instances. Neither coubl the emigration of baptized 
Jews and Moors and their children — the so-called " new ChrisUaus" — or of those 
nnder the displeasure of the Inquisition be pi'evented. On the contrary, these two 
classes formed the main contingent of tlie emigrants, at least in the first half cen- 
tury of Spanish colonization, in spite of the combined vigilance of the church and 
the Inquisition. It is difficult for us now to imagine how those unfortunates, who 
were seeking an asylum in the New "World, could have succeeded in escaping the 
sharp watch of the Holy Office and have reached the shores of America unmolested, for 
there were spies of the Inquisition on every ship. Yet not hundreds, but thousands, 
of those poor people made their escape, and we will cite two facts iu proof of the 
statement, although many more could be given. When Hernando Cortcz was sum- 
moned from New Spain the Government wished to enforce the prohibition of the 
emigration of new Christians. Accordingly an enumeration of them was taken 
throughout the whole viceroyalty as a preliminary to returning them to Spain, but 
the matter went no further, because the number of new Christians and of those 
under the ban of the Inquisition was found to be so astonishingly large that the 
decree of removal to Spain was not carried out through fear of a revolt. There 
wore still more of these suspected subjects iu Peru, a fact which should not excite 
our wonder, because Peru was the most remote of all the Si)anish colonies in America, 
and it was natural for these marked men to eudeayor to get as far as possible from 
the mother country, although even in that Ultima Thule of Spanish America free- 
dom of opinion was not tolerated, and the Holy Ofidce was represented in Lima by a 
tribunal of the Inquisition as early as 1.j70. So to Peru Hocked crowds of Portu- 
guese New Christians, either directly from Portugal or from Brazil, Avhere converted 
Jews and Moors and their children were held iu slavery. These Portuguese ''New 
Christians" were especially the objects of the zealous care of the Holy Inquisition, 
because, on account of their business talents and their enterpri.se in mining, they 
soon acquired more wealth than the Spanish -'Old Christians." We meet these 
Portuguese Jews (or "Judaizing Portuguese") in all the anfo ilafi'soi Lima, and, 
notably, on the occasion of the great ceremony of January 23, 1639, Avhich was con- 
ducted with the customary pomp. Seven of the accused appeared upon white 
horses and with x>alm branches in their hands. They were the fortunate ones who 
had succeeded iu proving their innocence. Fifty were condemned to wear the gar- 
ment of disgrace, the symbol of heresy, the "San henito." Among those condemned 
to death was Don Manuel Bautista Perez, who was noted for his wealth. He owned 
the house still known in Lima as "Pilate's house." The silver mines of Iluarochivt'^, 
celebrated for their productiveness, belonged to him, besides two large plantations. 
He was found guilty of .Judaism, and Avas condemned on that account and as a 
leader of the Judaizing Christians. AVith him were burned eight wealthy merchants 
and one of the best physicians of his time and country, Don Francisco Maldonado, 
a native of Tucnman (now Ai'gcntine), all beiug condemned for heresy and Judaizing. 
At the auto da fe of November 17,1641, fourteen .ludaizing Portuguese figured, and 
the Inquisition api^lied to the audiencia of Lima to expel the Portuguese, who were 
all more or less susiiected of Judaizing, "roni the c(douy. Accordinglj', the viceroy, 
Don Pedro de Toledo y Loira, Marquis de Maucera, required all the Portuguese in 
the colony to report to the authorities to obtain passes and go to Brazil or elsewhere 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND TOKTO lihO. 927 

out of the < oloiiy. Six thousand of these people reported iu accordance with this 
order, but by a largo bribe they obtained a repeal of the decree and remained thence- 
forward in the country. The complaints of Judaiziug decreased every year; yet 
in 1745 a wealthy landowner named Don Juan de Loyola died iu the prison of the 
Inquisition, his servant having charged him with the offense of Judaizing. 

There was, therefore, a class of men among the fu'st emigrants who had no feeling of 
attachment or of grateful remembrance for the Spanish home they had left ; but on the 
contrary felt only fear for every thing that came from Spain — her officials, her heresy 
judges, and her laws. These New Christians transmitted their aversion to Spain, to 
their children, and as the latter became incorporated with the Old Christian emi- 
grants and the Indians a caste was formed which, prominent by its numbers, intel- 
lectual activity, and wealth, would have become a dangerous ferment oven if left to 
itself, but which was rceuforced by a second emigration of dissatisfied masses. 

This second wave of Spanish emigratioii was a consequence of the fall of Spanish 
liberty. Uefore the period under consideration the Spanish States possessed extraor- 
dinarily liberal constitutions (the Fueros), which far surpassed the English system 
of the time in respect of popular rights. We, in middle Europe, have given the 
nickname of ''Spanish" to the stiff liurgundian etiquette introduced by Philip the 
Fair and Charles V into Spain, and by this robaptism have got the false idea that 
this court etiquette was a national peculiarity of the Spanish people. As a matter 
of fact, however, before the entrance of the llapsburgers into the Government, a tone 
of familiarity prevailed in the intercourse between the King and his subjects iu 
Spain. In the sessions of the Cortes the deputies of the "third estate" criticised 
the King and his court with a freedom that would make the hair of a president of the 
Rcichsrath of the present day stand on end with fright; yet neither the presidents 
nor the speakers of those days who expressed their opinions of their princes so ojienly 
were in danger of being accused of treason, and even Isabella the Catholic and her 
crafty husband never made any attempts to curtail the popular rights or even to 
trench upon them. This was reserved for the followMug emperor, Charles Y. 

Charles had inherited the crown of Castile in 1506, when he was G years old, 
and in 1516, after the death of his maternal grandfather, Aragou also became his. 
Boni and brought up in Flanders, he first visited Spain iu 1518. where at every step 
he and his Ijurgundiau followers succeeded ia wounding the national pride of the 
Spaniards at the same time that they broke the customs of the two realms. Then 
followed oppressive taxes, which were called for by Charles's contest for the Roman- 
German imperial throne. The discontent became general and broke out in a revolt 
which is generally called the revolt of the comuneros, a name taken from the great 
confederation of the cities known as the Junta Santa, or Comunidad, which was 
formed on July 29, 1520, at Avila. This confederation was the work of the "thii'd 
estate,'' but at its head was a nobleman, Don Pedro Lase de la Vega, and the army 
of the federation was commanded by another noble, Don Pedro de Giron, and a high 
church dignitary, the ])ishop of Zaniora, played a conspicuous and unexpected rule 
iu a military capacity. There is no doubt that the whole nobility and clergy would 
have ranged tliemselves on the side of the comuneros of the junta had it not, iu its 
petition of right of October 20, 1520, i»resented to the Emperor an amendment to 
the constitution, together with other petitions and com}>laints, which proposed to 
remove the nobility from the whole machinery of the Government and hand over 
all Government aflairs to the "third estate." The author of this radical-democratic 
constitution v.-as, it should be said in passing, the aristocratic president of the junta 
himself. In answer to this attack upon their privileges the high nobility and 
clergy placed their property and power at the disposal of the Emperor, and the 
comuneros were defeated in the battle of Villalar on April 23, 1521. From this 
time on Charles began to rule despotically in Castile, which, with Aragon, had 
possessed the freest constitution in Europe up to that time. The Cortes were, 
indeed, summoned as before, but they played nearly the same part as the Senate iu 
the time of the Roman emperors. 



928 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

The first couse<nieiice of the fall of Spanish liberty upon trans-Atlantic possessions 
was an emigration in great numbers of malcontents and compromised persons to the 
new gold fields. Thus another element hostile to the mother country was added to 
the New Christians, which Ijronght to the New World only bitter recollections of the 
home left behind, recollections that were handed down to the latest descendants, so 
that, for example, when a revolt against new monojiolies occurred in Socorro, New 
Granada, in 1781, the insurgents took the name of comuueros. Therefore, in the first 
three or four decades of Spanish colonization, streams of emigrants reached America 
who had no special attachment to the old country, and who cherished only the ani- 
mosity of malcontents toward the actual Government and the form of government 
itself. Besides these revolutionary constituents, the Spanish population of the New 
World was comi>osed also of a great number of adventurers who had left Spain only 
out of ambition and avarice. 

Long before Castiliau liberty was buried on the battlefield of Villalar, Ferdinand, 
King of Aragon, who was carrying on the government in Castile for his uncle Charles, 
had taken care thiit the conquerors of the New World should not use the prestige 
of their achievements for establishing their own sway. Isabella the Catholic never 
had the remotest idea that it was possible for Columbus to create a kingdom for 
himself across the ocean by breaking away from Spain. The suspicious Ferdinand, 
who respected nothing except his religion, scented treason and defection everywhere, 
and he directed his etil'orts to removing the conquistadores from the possessions 
which thej' had conquered with their own strength and at their own expense and 
danger, and replacing them by mere officials who would be subservient servants of 
the Crown. The King was displeased when the conquerors of a district ruled it as 
governors, and every pretext was seized upon to withdraw the patents that had 
been granted, or, if that was impossible, by the subdivision of the whole districts, to 
restrict the governorship of th<^ conquistadores at least in area. These latter tactics 
were followed in the case of the family of Columbus, whose inherited domain was 
much diminished by dividing Cuba. In the case of Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the 
famous discoverer of the Pacific, the Crown listened to the complaints of dissatisfied 
colonists and used them to displace Balboa. But this was not enough. Balboa was 
still too dangerous as a private man, and so he had to die by the hand of the execu- 
tioner. Everyone remembers what kind of thanks Cortez received for the conquest 
of Mexico. 

Nor did the storm of royal displeasure smite only the lofty trees to the ground. 
The removal of the conquistadores from the offices which they had acquired on the 
strength of their patents as conquerors became reduced to a system that reached 
high and low iudift'erently. So that there was not only no sentiment of attachment 
to the old country among the conquistadores, but they cherished feelings of resent- 
ment which reminds one decidedly of the modern separatist sentiments of the Cubans, 
BO strong were the feelings of the conc^uerors against their thankless fatherland. 
Thus all three of the elements which constituted the white population of the Spanish 
colonies were not well disposed toward Spain. The conquistadores, the new Chris- 
tians, and the comuueros were all alike disposed, in the first decades of Spanish colo- 
nial rule, to sever from her the lands they had con(|uere(l for Spain. 

The first undoubted illustration of this condition of aftairs is afforded by the 
history of New Spain in the year 1526. Cortez had been summoned to Spain after 
experiencing a series of petty annoyances from the oflicials who had been sent over 
by Charles V. He obeyed the summons and journeyed from the city of Mexico to 
the coast to take ship at Vera Cruz for Europe. Before his departure from the 
cai)ital, deputations from the cities he had founded in New Spain had come to him 
and urged him to resume the government of the colony. He refused to accede to 
this request, and on his journey from Mexico to Vera Cruz he had to receive deputa- 
tions at every stopping place, from the feudal lords and citizens, who reiterated the 
reqnest, and some even went so far as to urge him to allow himself to be proclaimed 
king of New Spain, but he remained true to his allegiance. 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 929' 

These same ideas of iiulcpeudcnce are met again twentj' years later iu tlie camp 
of Gonzalo Pizarro in Pern. When that brave brother of the conqueror of the 
Incas was urged by the colonists to make armed resistance against the officials whom 
Charles Y had sent to Peru, he had no idea of renouncing his King. He wanted to 
draw his sword against the government and its rex^rcsentatives because, in his own 
view and that of his companions, the home Government had acted illegally and 
arbitrarily against the colony. Put at the outset one of his best officers, Francisco 
de Carvajal, advised him to direct the revolt not simply against the viceroy but the 
King of Spain himself, "for" said he, "if you once take arms against eirher king, 
you can never lay them down again." Carvajal was no common adventurer, but had 
been a major in the royal army and had taken a conspicuous part in the battle of 
Pavia. How bitter must have been the feeling among the Spaniards in the colony 
when the resentment at oppression could drive a royal officer to high treason of the 
worst kind ! In tlie course of the civil war that ensued the separatist tendency 
became more firmly established, and at the sisme time Carvajal found an ally in the 
Councilor Cepeda, a man who could saj', " The power of all kings comes from tyranny 
and iisurpation, " a very striking remark for those times. Carvajal added, "I would' 
like to see Adam's will, so as to know if Charles V and the Queen of Castile are set 
down in it as rulers of Peru." Pizarro decided at the last moment to separate- 
entirely from the King, but it was too late; he fell in battle, and liis head was struck 
off as that of a rebel. 

So, too, iu La Plata a revolt of the couqnistadores against the royal officers broke 
out, which was subdued with difficulty. More notewortliy was tlie rising of Lope 
de Aguirre (1559-1562), whose letter of renunciation to I'hilip II was published by 
Humboldt iu his Travels Through the P>xuiuoctial Regions. In ifc occiirs the follow- 
ing passage, which is often quoted l)y modern separatists: "Christian King, you 
have been ungrateful to me and my comrades. I believe that everything that is^ 
reported to you from here deceives you, because the distance is so great; but I 
counsel you to be more just to the faithful vassals whom you have here, because I 
and my comrades are weary of seeing the injustice and violence which your governors' 
and officers commit in your name. We have decided to obey you no longer and no 
JoiKjer rejard otirselres as Spaniards. We are fighting with all our might against 
you because we will not submit to the tyranny of your officers, who dispose of our 
property and honor as they please in order to provide places for their sons." 

The jireceding examples show how little love there was for the mother country- 
existing in the first Spanish colonists, and others could easily be added iu support 
of them, and the feeling thus early engendered served as a guide for the succeeding' 
generations, and all the more because immigration from Spain fell off after the end 
of the sixteenth century, so that the discontent of the first emigrants became the- 
common property of the Spaniards who were born iu the land — the Creoles. It would? 
doubtless have disappeared in time if the Spanish Government had not, by its colo- 
nial policy, set up a dividing wall between the European and the American Span- 
iards, and thereby produced those unpleasant relations between Creoles and Span- 
iards that greatly promoted the desire for indepeudence on the part of the Spanish 
Americans. 

It is not necessary to say that at first there was no difference between Spaniards borir 
in America and those who were natives of Spain, either iu social intercourse orpolit- 
ical positions, but the way in which the home Government took to itself tlie conduct 
of all public affairs of the colonies by sending over the higher officials to take charge- 
must alone have led to the feeling that European Spaniards were something more- 
than the American, a view that in course of time became a dogma with the European 
Spaniards, in which the most intelligent of them have come to believe. Every 
European Spaniard regards himself as the representative of the nation when he 
visits the colonies, and looks upon the native-born Spaniards or Creoles as a lower 
caste which he is called upon to govern. This idea that the European Spaniards' 
ED 98 59 



930 EDUCATION REPOET, 1897-98. 

were to exert an unassailable supremacy over the Creoles is hardly a thing of 
national origin, but first arose through the eoutinnous influence of the governmental 
system and then became an integral constituent of the Spanish national character. 
That this is so is shown T)y the examjilo of the Canary Islands. These African 
islands were settled by the Sjianiards just before the time of Ferdinand, and when 
the colonization of America began the Canaries were already regarded as iiart of 
European Sixain, as they are to-daj-, and so it has come that the Canary Islanders have 
always regarded themselves as Spaniards, and a separatist there would be regarded 
as insane or be a laughiugstoclc. 

There is no doubt that if America had been discovered and talcen possession of by 
the Spaniards about 1120-1410, the impassable gulf between Spaniards and Creoles, 
which sooner or later was to lead to a bloody separation, would never have existed. 
The first colonists, and even Isabella the Catholic, never expected that the trans- 
marine kingdom would come to be a possession of the Spanish Crown and a chari- 
table institution for European officials. As has already been remarked, the first 
Spanish colonists carried to America all the liberties they had enjoyed in their Cas- 
tilian fatherland. They bore to the new world not only their language, their man- 
ners, and their religion, but also all the political organizations of their European 
home. They had no intention of becoming the living portion of a Spanish estate, 
but were engaged in founding sister i^rovinccs. Above cA'erytbing else their civic 
autonomy and constitutional form of government were sacred to them, and to 
renounce these rights seemed to them like an insult to their Spanish name. Without 
doubt they would have eventually created conditions like those of the English col- 
onies of North America, i. e., colonies with their own constitutions. That there 
were tendencies in this direction is shown by the fact that up to 1550 we often hear 
of procuradores (dej)utie3 from the cities) meeting to discuss affairs of public impor- 
tance, especially jictitions and complaints to the King, so that the individual colonies 
had their cortes like those of Castile and Aragon, with the difference that in the 
colonics only the third estate was represerited (a circumstance that throws a clear 
light upon the democratic tendencies of the first emigrants) and that this assembly 
did not take the name of cortes perhaps because the two other estates were not, as 
such, represented in it. 

Againstthis spirit of independence the Spanish Government directed all its powers, 
after the death of Isabella the Catholic, whose ideas were stronglj' constitutional. 
It will be, perhaps, objected that her conduct toward Columbus was not entirely free 
from the ingratitude which her husband and successor showed to the great discoverers 
and conquerors. It must not be forgotten, however, in passing judgment upon these 
circumstances, that the privileges which had been granted to the discoverer of Amer- 
ica not only limited the rights of the Crown very materially, but often were opposed 
to the spirit of Castilian liberty. The encroachments of Isabella upon the patented 
rights of Admiral Columbus were all for the benefit of the settlers and colonies, like, 
for example, the edict of April 10, 1495, which allowed all Castiliansto settle in the 
newly discovered lands. Also, the governor which she sent to Santo Domingo, Don 
Nicolas de Ovando, acted in a spirit of liberty when he granted to all the cities of 
that island the royal privileges of the commoners of Castile, which Columbus had 
withheld from them, 

Ferdinand's regency altered fundamentally this iiolicy of liberty. At his instiga- 
tion a board called the Casa de Coniracion was created at Seville, which at first only 
was to supervise the trade and shipping to and from the New World, but which 
graduallj'^ assumed control of all colonial affairs to the exclusion of .all other Cas- 
tilian officials, depriving the Cortes also of any opportunity of participating in the 
affairs of the Indies (the colonies). After the battle of Villalar the Council of the 
Indies became the supremo authority in regard to all Spanish estates. Through 
this Council the throne exercised its absolute power over the colonies, even though 
the Castilian Cortes still retained some of their ancient rights. The Council of the 
Indies labored to imdcrmine the liberties of the Spanish-American communes and to 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND POKTO KICO. 931 

make the goveruiueut of the colouies more and uioro Lureaucratic. This imdertak- 
iug would probably have been foiled by the re.sistuucc of the coluniste if the white 
populatiou had been as stable at first as it was later. lUit since the seizure of those 
imnieuse territories which constituted the Spauish colonial empire was effected in 
from sixty to oue hundred years, while the direct immigration from Spain between 
the years 1550 and 1860 shows a rapidly decreasing annual list, it came to pass that 
upon the discovery or conquest of a new region a rapid cmigTation took place 
from colonies already settled. Thus the greater part of the colonists of Santo 
Domingo went to Cuba, Jamaica, and icrra Jirma; those of Cuba flocked to Mexico, 
while the Mexican settlers went to Peru and the Philippines, etc. In this T»'ay is to 
be explained liow it was that, in spite of the hostile feelings of the colonists toward 
Spain, only isolated risings, but never a nniversal, common, serious resistance to 
the Spanish Crown took place. 

Meanwhile, it should be said that the Crown and the Council of the Indies showed 
great wisdom in the selection of the oflicers for America all tlirough the sixteenth 
century. Nor were the otiices then sinecures for the favorites and parasites of the 
Madrid Government. The seventeenth century, however, is for Spanish America 
one long, starless night. The policy of Philip II now began to bear its fruit in the 
mother country as well as in the colonies. Spauish absolutism had gradually 
accustomed the Spaniards to rely entirely upon the church and state for their very 
existence, and no longer to venture and act by their own initiative and at their own 
danger and expense. To bo an officeholder or a priest was the only alternative for 
those who had any aspirations; and since there were not enougli official positions 
and preferments in state and church in Spain to supply tlie demand, America was 
called upon to take care of the excess. These officials knew nothing of iidelity to 
their trust or zeal for duty, but regarded their positions as a means of enriching 
themselves at the exjienso of the state, or rather, at the expense of the natives, for 
the colonies were not maintained by contributions from the mother country. 

Even in the first half of the seventeenth century the Creoles manifested a deep 
hatred against the Spaniards. The Irish Dominican Cage, who lived in Spanish 
America a long time, wrote in 1625 : " It would be very easy to arouse the cre(des to 
make common cause with an enemy of Spain, for they are harshly treated; and 
whenever they have cases in court the judges are always on the side of the European 
Spaniards and against them. They regard this condition as intolerable, and to such 
an extent that I have often heard them say that they would rather serve any other 
prince than the King of Spain."' These hostile feelings broke out in an insurrection 
in Mexico in 1624; the viceroy was taken prisoner, audit was only through the 
intervention of the native-born clergy that the Creoles were prevented from declar- 
ing their independence. This contemptuous slight bore heaviest upon the descend- 
ants of the old conquerors, aud it was moreover unlawful, since under the law they 
were to be preferred in filling all offices. The same Gage who was quoted above 
says : " In Lima there are descenilants of I'izarro, in ^Mexico aiul Oajaca is the family 
of the Marquis del Yalle (Cortez), aud there are besides families belonging to the 
noble houses of the Girons, the Alvarados, and Guzmans, or collateral lines of the 
highest nobility of Spain, but no member of any of these families holds any office of 
honor or any high position. They are rather treated with contempt by theEuropean 
Si>aniard3, as if they were not capable of self-government; and are looked down upon 
as inferiors, barbarians, or Indians.'' This language is heard to-day from the 
Philippine islanders. The Spaniards usually answer charges of this kind by saying 
that so and so many Creoles have occuiiied such and such civil, military, or clerical 
offices. It ought to be said, however, that these Creoles, although boi'u in America, 
had lived and studied a long time in Spain, and ao had ceased to be regarded by the 
Spaniards as real Creoles. Such, for example, was the minister of vrar in the last 
administration of Canova del Castillo, General Azcarraga, who was a Philippine 
islander, but had been in Spain from his youth up, and so was it with other Creoles 
who held high offices in Spanish America; either they were •' Americans only by 



932 EDUCATION EEPORT, 1897-98. 

accifleut," or they united themselves closely to the European Spaniards and sought 
to hide their birthmark by unadulterated Spanish principles. Tlie Bourbons indeed 
introduced a better government into the colonies, and endeavored to restrict the 
plundering of the Indians and Creoles ; but the increasing number of official positions 
brought over an always increasing number of Spanish office seekers just at the. time 
the Creoles were awakening from the long .spiritual torpor in which they had lain 
from 1570 to 1720. 

The earliest Spanish emigrants must have been an intellectuallj- active set of 
people. This is an inference from the fact that, as above mentioned, it was for the 
most part political refugees or malcontents who founded the cities with Spanish 
names in the countries they conquei-ed and plundered . But we have another proof 
of the fact in the rich literature of the Conquest. We read with nstonisliment the 
reports of plain, common soldiers and merchants, and find in their presentations 
clearness of expression and a sharp lookout for everything worth noting. Later 
there was a reaction, the Creoles lived at ease in their city houses or on their 
haciendas, while ignorance and idleness were forced upon thein by the Spaniards. 
Th(> small attendance at the colleges also speaks for their intellectual indolence at 
the j)eriod mentioned, although their ignorance probably was not so great as would 
be indicated by a story tuld by the often quoted Gage, who relates that a prominent 
Creole at Chiapas once asked him if the same sun shone in England as in America. 
Spanish Americans of the j^resent day defend this mental inactivily of their ances- 
tors by pointing out that they were excluded from all offices, and they were wise to 
lead an indifferent and idle life rather than pursue studies which would only sub- 
ject tliem to the suspicion of the governing caste, as is to-day the case in the Philip- 
piaies, where the educated natives are regarded as suspicious characters. 

The revival in culture and knowledge which the Creoles underwent in the 
eighteenth century is not to be credited to the mother country, but is a consequence 
of foreign influence. The Spanish Government had taken every precaution to guard 
its colonies against foreigners, but the force of circumstances proved too strong. 
The numerous wars which Spain was always carrying on frequently interrupted the 
relations between the mother country and the colonies; and since the latter, thauks 
to Spanish colonial policy, had no domestic indu.stries of their own, but Avere 
obliged to depend on Spain for many tilings that might easily h:ive been produced 
at home, the home government found itself compelled in war times to grant indi- 
vidual colonies permission to relieve their most pressing needs by trading abroad. 
Altliough this permission was only granted as cases arose, yet it was sufficient to 
establish friendly relations between the colonies and other countries, according aa 
Spain was in alliance with England, Holland, or France, and these relations were 
continued, after normal conditions were resumed, under the form of an extensive 
smuggling. This smuggling is of importance not only in the history of the trade of 
Spanish America, but because the Creoles, by the intercourse thus established Avith 
other countries, came to learn foreign languages (especially English and French), 
and their intellectual horizon was Avideued by contact with foreign literatures, and 
all this happened just at the time when the quality of the officials who were sent 
to the colonies from Spain was deteriorating. Zabala says of them: "Most of 
them came from the provinces of Spain Avith no other property than a coat, a j)air 
of breeches, and three shirts. Many of them could hardly read, and had no other 
knowledge of the world and affairs than Avhat they had picked up on the voyage. 
* * * Many of them believed that there was no other king but the King of 
Spain, and no other language than Sj)auish." This description is evidently colored 
by the hatred of a Mexican for Spaniards, but. Spaniards themselves like the Duke 
of Aliuodovar, Don Tomas de Comyn, Fray Augustin do Santa Maria, and the 
Jesuit P. Vicente Aleman, say even worse things of the King's officials than Zabala. 
It can now easily be seen how dangerous it must have been for the Spanish regime 
which was only founded upon authority, when the rich Creoles not only regarded 
the representatives of the motherland Avith the hatred of the o])pressed toward the 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 933 

oiipressors, but also looked down iipoii them from a consciousness of their own 
intellectual superiority. Their fate seemed to them all the more pitiful and their 
lot the more unworthy when they heard the Spaniards boasting of their own superi- 
ority and the inferiority of the Americans. The administration of the King's favor- 
ite, Godoy, contributed especially to bring the Spanish rule iu America into equal 
hatred and contempt, for this upstart sent to the colonies the worst of ail office- 
holders—men who openly declared with utter cynicism that their own enriching was 
the only object they had in view in taking office. " * * 

I liaA-e hitherto spoken only of Creoles, and that because the war of independence 
in all the Spanish colonies was only carried on by white natives, the insurrection of 
Father Hidalgo excepted. This latter insiirrection, of c(dored men alone, was, how- 
ever, not successful, nor did the separatist movement meet with a successful issue 
until the Creoles declared their independence of Spain. The Indian farmers of 
Central America and the region of the Andes were so indolent that they could hardly 
be induced to take part in the w^ar of independence. They had not, it is true, been 
too well treated by the Creoles, but for the luost part they stood to them in much 
the same relation as the peasants of La Yend<^e sustained to their seigneurs, and 
were, therefore, inclined to take the part of their lords, even if they had no very 
clear idea of the cause of their (luarrel. The Spaniards had prepared, it is true, a 
most admirable code of laws for the protection of the Indians, but the officials 
paid no attention to legal requirements and simply regarded the Indians as objects of 
plunder, like that coyegidor who compelled the Indians under his authority 
to buy from him thousands of pairs of spectacles. No reasonable Spraiiard could 
expect love and gratitude from people who had first been robbed of their liberty by 
his people and then condemned to everlasting servitude. Also, Spanish absolutism 
caused the Indians to lay all the blame for their sufferings upon the Government, 
although the Creoles were occasionally the immediate cause. In vain had Spain 
founded her sway upon caste, envy, and the ancient principle divide et inipera. 
At the very moment when this system onght to have withstood the supreme trial 
it failed completely. The common oppression which was shared by the white, the 
yellow, the brown, and the black man alike produced a reaction to which the Spanish 
dominion succumbed. 

The negroes (speaking now of the eighteenth century) played only an insignificant 
part in the war of independence; they only appear in any force in Venezuela. The 
Spaniards armed them against the rebels, but they finally joined the latter. As they 
were mostly slaves and freedmen, without education or knowledge, they simply fur- 
nished food for powder for both jiarties. It is ditferent nowadays in Cuba, when a 
small fraction of the negroes have raised themselves from the condition of laborers 
by virtue of a certain degree of education, mostly of a political character, which 
gives them a great influence over their fellows, an indueuce which is devoted to the 
dissenunation of an unyielding and uncompromising separatist sentiment. These 
educated negroes, especially the mulattoes and all mixed bloods, said to themselves, 
as soon as they had eaten of the tree of political knowledge, that they could only 
attain to influence and po^3ition in the land of their birth when the colonies had 
become independent. In fact, it is hardly conceivable that the European Spaniards, 
who regard even the Creoles as inferiors, would ever h.ave intrusted either high or 
medium offices to negroes and other people of color, for that would infringe the 
unwritten law of the Spanish national pride. The Spaniards even regarded it as 
impossible that the Creoles should ever subordinate themselves to colored men, and yet 
during the war of independence of their colonies on the mainland they lived to see 
Creole nobles under the command of colored generals and chieftains, so powerfully 
had the hatred of the Spanish oligarchy fostered a spirit of comradeship among the 
Spanish Americans; and as soon as these colonies became independent States the 
spectacle was seen of an Indian, Don Benito .luarez, becoming President of the Repub- 
lic of Mexico. If Mexico had remained a Spanish colony, .Juarez could never have 



934 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

risen above the positioix of some subordiuate office, oven if he could have obtained 
that. From the nature of the Spanish colonial system, and the uarroAv-mindcdness 
of the Spanish national character, it "was the demand of self-respect for intelligent 
and educated colored men to strive with all their might for the severance of their 
native land from Spain, The Spaniards can not nnderstand this attitude of too 
colored races. They complain of their ingratitude, showing how they hail brought 
Christianity and European civilization to the Indians and negroes and always treated 
them kindly, far differently from the English, who erect an impassable barrier between 
themselves and the natives and do not concern themselves about either their salva- 
tioii or education. Foreign writers, too, even those who have lived a long time in 
Spanish colonies, speak in the same way, and point ont that in Cuba, Porto Kico, and 
the Philippines the colored races live in an idyllic condition compared with the 
natives of English or Dutch colonies. Put all these encomiasts forget that the whole 
Spanish colonial system siguiflcs a policy which makes great promises and awakens 
ambition, but does not keep its promises and disapi^oints the aroused ambition. 
The man of color in the Antilles who is satisfied with the condition of a peasant and 
laborer can always enjoy an idyllic existence, but if he betakes himself to study 
and is ambitious to play a ixditical part in his home^ or aspires to a higher office 
than that of a clerk, he will ilnd his career completely closed. AVhy do the Span- 
iards take so much trouble to raise the colored people to the level of their civiliza- 
tion, only to exclude them from office and honors, and even represent them in the 
press as intellectually deficient? Peoiile who are so thrust aside and subjected to 
such contemiituous treatment can not be expected to exhibit much regard for the 
Si)aniard8, for the rule of the latter means for them only humiliation and slavery, a 
perpetual helotism, which at most is ameliorated by kindly personal relations between 
the t\vo races. 

■■ * ■' In the days of her sovereignty upon the Continent Spain did everything 
to hinder any mercantile or industrial advance of the colonies by a shortsighted 
guardiaushiii. The number of ships for the carrying trade between the mother 
country and the colonies was strictly fixed. So, too, strict rules were established 
which restricted the free cultivation of all plants which could flourish in the colo- 
nies, so that in many regions only certain products could be exported. This was 
still more true of industries, although it must be said that certain flourishing indus- 
tries in Spain itself (such as the silk culture of Valencia) were ruined by foolish legis- 
lation. The Americans endeavored to recouj) themselves for the damages inflicted 
upon them by the mother country by an extensive system of smuggling with foreign 
countries. In this way they became accustomed to procure all the products of 
industry from abroad, and busied themselves only with agriculture and cattle rais- 
ing. The first Spanish immigrants had brought with them their home industries, but 
these as well as those of the natives, became disused, not from the indolence of the 
Americans, but from the force of cii'cumstanees, which, in this case, was the colonial 
system of the Spanish Government. 

The smuggling system was fateful for the Spanish rule, for it brought not only 
wares, but new ideas, into the land, particularly the reflection that the foreigners were 
wiser and better people than the Spaniards, who had, up to that time, been consid- 
ered the first nation of the world. The great profits that the plantation owners 
made by smuggling created the desire to have their external trade regulated by law, 
and this wish was fulfilled by the really glorious Government of Charles III. Imfor- 
tunately, the relief of trade vras combined with the introduction of monopolies, the 
most opi)ressive of which was that of tobacco, and Humboldt has shown in several 
places how the tobacco monopoly was one of the measures that extended the discon- 
tent with the Spanish rule into circles which would otherwise not have cared 
whether they were subjects of Spain or citizens of a free state. The restriction of 
agriculture and free trade by monopolies not only produced discontent in the colo- 
nics, but it suggested to England, which was interested in both the legitimate and 



EDrCATION IX CTBA AND POUTO RR O. f)35 

the siuugyliui;- trade with tbeiii. tlie policy of foniouting this (lisconteiit, with a view 
either to acquire the cohmies herself or convert them into free states. The yonnger 
Pitt followed this plan, which his successors did not allow to fall into uej^leet. 

The Spanish colonics, therefore, even by the middle of the eighteenth ecntnry 
had hecome revolutionary in sentiment, lint many of the discontented still adhered 
to the dynasty and were reluctant to sever all the bonds that united them with the 
mother country, while the radicals were in doubt what should be done with the 
colonies in case of separation; they thought of creating empires and kingdoms, but 
could not decide whence to derive the emperors and kings. The revolt of the pres- 
ent United States finally pointed out the way they ought to follow. The treaty 
between Spain and the Yankees, too, taught them that it could not be an unpardon- 
able sin — a crimen uefaiidum — for a colony to rebel against the oppressions of the 
mother country. The example of the English colonies also showed them — and this 
was the most important lesson of all — the form of government which is best suited 
for indejieudent colonies. In this way all anxiety as to who should rule in the free 
states was removed. Si»ain could still have retained her hold upon her colonies if 
the constitution of 1812 had remained; but the reaction which Ferdinand YII intro- 
duced into Spain upon his restoration in 1814 took away from the Spanish-Americans 
all confidence in the permanence of the liberties that had been granted them, and 
they preferred independence to an nncertaiu future. The Spaniards, however, 
learned nothing from the rebellion of their continental colonies. The refusal of 
political rights in Cuba remained, as before, the rule of their colonial policy; politi- 
cal reforms were granted only when they were forcibly extoited by insurrections — 
that is to say, when they were too late — and produced in the minds of the natives 
the ineradicable conviction of the ill will and envy of the mother country. Among 
foreigners the separatist sentiment of the Spanish Americans is explained as being 
due to the plundering of the colonies by Spain, a statement which is only true in a 
slight degree. In the first place only a few of the colonies have had an excess of 
income over expenditures, and in the second jilace even this did not all go to Spain, 
but was applied to making good the deficit of less fortunate colonies, just as to-day 
the expenses of the Spanish Guinea islands are defrayed out of the budget for the 
Philippines. For many decades Spain has had no income from either Cuba or Porto 
Kico. In the nineteenth century the Spanish colonies have been plundered in the 
fullest sense of the word, not by Spain, but by Spanish oflicials. These officials in 
the two centuries preceding the present were more or less permanent, a condition 
that has changed since the introduction of the constitutional system in Spain. 
Every new ministry now- dismisses the higher and most of the lower officers of the 
former regime and replaces them with its own partisans. As ministries change 
frequently in Spain there is a constant going and coming of officials in the colonies, 
whereby the interests of the mother country are seriously affected. The officials are 
consequently induced more than ever to lay up something for a rainy day, and they 
never have time enough to acquire a thorough knowledge of either the colonial lands 
or peoples. As the Roman provinces were made to pay the debts of the aristocratic 
proconsuls and propraetors, so have the Spanish colonics served to provide places for 
the faithful adherents of the changing parties in Madrid and their parasites. It is 
this peculiarity of Spanish political life that makes useful reforms so difficult, if not 
impossible. The noble and conscientious colonial minister, Don Segismundo Moret, 
was compelled to yield to the storm of odium whicli ho aroused because the reforms 
which heiuaugurated in Cuba were real reforms. The Spanish officials in the colonies 
are the most extreme reactionaries even when they are the wildest radicals at home, 
because they know that every reform must check their abuses ; so that the mainte- 
nance of the old colonial system is for them a question of existence. 

Every effort at reform was represented by them as a separatist movement in dis- 
guise, so that an unfix vorablc prejudice against refornjs and reformers was created in 
Spain, and the latter were as much hai'rnssed in their native countrv as the -'dema- 



936 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

gog'iies" and liberals once were in Germany. It seems never to Lave occurred to 
the Spauiaids tliat sucli proceedings wonld only intensify anti-Spanish and separatist 
feelings, else they would never have forced snch a loyal peojile as the natives of the 
Philippines have always been to an insurrection. 

All that is said in the preceding article miglit be repeated, word for 
Avord, in describing the history of Cuba alone in the present centnry, 
after enlighteumeut had become diffused. The intolerable nature of the 
oppression and contemptuous treatment of the Cubans by the Govern- 
ment officials led to insurrection after insurrection. In 18G0 Anthony 
Trollope remarked that the Cubans had lost all their rights save that of 
being taxed. Before this century began, or rather before the English 
occupation of Havana in 1702, there is little of event in the history of 
Cuba for the present purpose. The poi)ulation was small, not exceed- 
ing 170,000 even as late as the middle of the last century. The attacks 
of French, Dutch, and English pirates, buccaneers, and naval expedi- 
tions against Cuba and Porto Eico continued at intervals from Drake's 
time down to the end of the last century. The industry and com- 
merce of the islands were of little importance until after the English 
occupation, after which date the cultivation of sugar, tobacco, and, 
later, coffee, became sources of wealth, and with free trade there was a 
general awakening. 

In the aristocratic slave holding community arose a growing interest 
in the intellectual movement in Europe, which was prompted every- 
where by the French revolution and its consequences. Cuban litera- 
ture and culture took a patriotic form, and the leading men in the intel- 
lectual movement of the island took a practical part in endeavoring to 
regenerate a community which had no education for the common peo- 
ple, and where, consequently, a most undesirable and dangerous condi- 
tion of life and morals prevailed.' 

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF EDUCATION IN CUBA. 

We are able to give an outline of the history of Cuban education 
from the work of Aurelio JMitJanes'-* upon the development of literature 
and science in Cuba down to 1808. Tliework is mainly devoted to the 
literature and particularly the poetry of the island; but, as the author 
justly remarks, some account of the state of education of the country is 
essential to understand the beginnings of its intellectual activity. He 
divides the history of the intellectual movement in Cuba into two 
epochs, separated by the men orable governujent of Gen. Luis de las 
Casas, which began in 1790. Before that period there was no constant 

' Before the strict rule of Governor General Tacou the streets of Havana were very 
unsafe from highwaymen, who were assassins as well as in the way of business. 
When one of the pieceding governors was appealed to for police protection, he 
replied, " Yon should do as I do; never go out after dark." 

^This author was a wealthy young Cuban gentleman, who, after graduating at tlio 
University of Havana, passed several years in Si)ain, where he <levoted himself to 
literature. He returned to Cuba and died there, of C()nsuni])tion, before reaching his 
thirtieth year. The i)resent work is posthnuious. 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND TORTO RICO. 937 

aud regular development of culture, but the investigator ouly fluds 
isolated iustauces of educational efforts scattered througli three cen- 
turies, during which time neither the Government nor the municipalities 
founded a single free school for the common people. After tlie admiuis- 
tration of Las Casas, however, to which, as in this work of Mitjanes, 
all Cuban writers refer as an epoch-making one, and especially aff-er the 
foundation of tiie Sociedad Economica, the conditions changed and real 
development began, always, however, by private initiative. 

That there were no elementary public schools in Cuba up to the end 
of the last century is not surprising, however, when wq compare the 
condition of other countries in this respect with that of Cuba. Thus 
President Ezra Stiles, of Yale, records in his diary under date of July 
17,1791: 

This day I was visited by JI. Talleyrand Perigovd, hisliop of Autiin, etc., and >\I. 
Beaumez, member for the district of Arras. The bishop has written a piece on edn- 
cation, and originated the bill or act in the National Assembly for setting np schools 
all over France for diffusing edncation and letters among the iilebeians. I desired 
them to estimate the jiroportion of those who conld not read m France. M. Beaumez 
said of 25,000.000 he judged 20,000,000 could not read. The bishop corrected it and 
said 18,000,000. 

At that same time, it should be remembered, intellectual activity, 
literary, philosophical, and scientific, the outgrowth of superior educa- 
tion, was at one of the high culminating points of its history in France. 

Even in Havana, up to the beginidng of the last century, there were 
no public elementary schools, and the need of them became so evident 
that by the munificence of a citizen (Caraballo) the Bethlehemite fathers 
opened a school where reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught, 
which was attended by 200 pupils. In Villa Clara a school was in exist- 
ence since the foundation of the town in 1G89. In 1712 the philanthropic 
Don Juan Conyedo, of Kemedios, opened a free school there, and another 
in 1757 at Carmen. Another was opened at Arriaga in 1759; but on the 
death of Conyedo these schools were closed. Don Juan Felix de Moya 
reopened that at Carmen, aud the municipality in 1775 voted twenty-five 
(loUars a year for the support of the other; but both ceased to operate 
definitely in 1787. In 1771 Matanzas, seventy-eight years after its 
toundation, authorized its governor to engage a school-teacher in 
Havana. 

is'or were secondary studies of a high character in the last century. 
Then, and subseijuently, too, as tlie historian Bachillcr, quoted by 
Mitjanes, remarks, more attention was paid to the pretentious form 
than the substance, and the title of academy or institute was giveu to 
institutions which were hardly more than primary schools, which held 
out inducements of a speedy preparation for the university. At that 
time, it should be remembered, the natural sciences had not reached 
the importance they subse(]uently attained, and the study of philosophy 
required the royal permission, so that secondary instru<^tion was rednced 
to a superficial study of the humanities, especially Latin, which occu- 



938 EDUCATIOX RErORT, l.s<i7-98. 

X3ied the leadiug place on account of its use in fitting for the universitj^, 
and because teacliers of Latin were easily found among- the clergy, who 
were the principal factors of education at that period. All this may 
be said without detracting from tlie praiseworthy eiforts and antiquity 
of some institutions like the Chax)ter of Havana, which, in 1G03, con- 
vinced of the need of a teacher of grammar, voted a hundred ducats for 
the support of one who should teach Latin, but as the plan did not meet 
with the royal approbation they were obliged to drop the project, only 
to revive it afterwards with a larger salary. In the same year the 
municipality provided for continuing classes in grammar by a monk of 
the convent, which had been suspended. In 1G07 Bishop Juan de las 
Cabezas Altamirano founded tlie Tridentiue Seminary, the citizens 
offering to pay part of the expenses annually. The secular clergy also 
gave lessons in Latin and morals, as Conyedo did. who prepared stu- 
dents for the priestliood in A'illa Clara, and later Fr. Antonio Perez de 
Corcho, who gave lectures on philosophy in the monastery of his order. 
By the bull of Adrian TI, of April 28, 1522, the Scholatria was estab- 
lished at Santiago de Cuba for giving instruction in Latin, and by his 
will, dated May 15, 1571, Cai)t. Francisco de Paradas left a consider- 
able sum for the foundation of a school in Bayamo, which, in 1720, was 
intrusted to the charge of two monks of San Domingo, in whose hands 
the estate increased. In 1G89 tlie College of San Ambrosio was estab- 
lished in Havana with twelve bursarships,for the purpose of preparing 
young men for the church, but it did not fulfill its purpose, and subse- 
quently received the severe censure of Bishop Hechavarria Yelgueza 
on account of its defective education, which had become reduced to 
Latin and singing. Fr. Jose Maria Penelvar oi>ened a chair of elo- 
quence and literature in the convent of La Merced in 1788. which also 
was not a success. 

After these attempts the foundation of a Jesuit college in Havana gave 
a new impulse to education. From the first, according to the historian 
Arrete, quoted by Mitjanes, the priests of this order had observed tlie 
inclination of the inhabitants of Havana toward education, and Peznela 
states in his History of Cuba that the municipality in 10."»G wished to 
establish a college of the order, but the ditferences between the Jesuits 
and the prelates in the other colonies had been so frequent that the 
bishops and priests in Havana opposed the plan. But as the population 
increased the demands for the college multiplied, and in 1717 a citizen 
of Havana, Don Gregorio Diaz Angel, contributed $40,000 in funds for 
the support of the college. The necessary license was obtained in 1721; 
three more years were spent in selecting and i>urchasing the ground, 
when the institution was opened under the name of the College of San 
Ignacio. The old college of San Ambrosio, which had been under the 
direction of the Jesuits since its establishment in 1G89, was then united 
with it, although the old college still retained its distinctive character 
as a foundation school for the church. 



EDTCATIOX IX CUBA AND PORTO KKO. 939 

As early as lOSS tlic ayjiiitamiento (or cit}' council) of Havana applied 
to the Eoyal Government to establisli a university in the city, in order 
that younff men desirous of study might not be compelled to go to tlie 
mainland or Spain. This re([uest was furthered by Bishop Yaldi'S, and 
finally, by a letter of Innocent XIII of September 12, 1721, the fathers 
of the convent of S. Juan Latran were authorized to found the institu- 
tion desired, and after some years of preparation it was opened in 1728, 
but the chairs of morals, phik)Sophy, and canon law were filled previ- 
ously by the Dominicans even before the funds were available. The 
university, by the order recei^'ed, was to have been modeled upon that 
of Santo Domingo, but finally the task of preparing the regulations for 
the new university was intrusted to the fathers above mentioned by a 
royal letter in 17;>2, and t\iey were approved by the university author- 
ities, the Captain-General, and in Spain by the Council of the Indies, 
on June 27, 1731. Tbe rectors, vice-rectors, counselors, and secreta- 
ries were to be Dominicans, a condition that produced innumerable 
rivalries and disputes until 1812. The first x)rofessors were appointed 
to their positions without limit of time. Afterwards they obtained their 
places by competition and for a terui of six years only. The first rector, 
Fr. Tomas do Linares, was appointed by the King in 1728, but his suc- 
cessors were elected by the university authorities and were renewed 
annually. Among the early rectors were Bishop ]Morell, of Santa Cruz, 
and the renowned Cuban orator. Eafael del Castillo. Unfortunately, for 
a century the university was an insignificant element of culture and was 
only useful as a subject of boasting on the part of Spain that she had 
introduced her civilization on this side of the water and on that of the 
Cubans that they were advancing in sciences and arts. Several .causes 
tended to restrict the value of the university. In the first place, it was 
modeled on a sixteenth century ]»attcrn. The Aristotelian system jire- 
vailed in its entirety. The professor of mathematics was to teach, 
besides practical arithmetic, wbi(;h consisted of the first four rules with 
the (I urea, elementary geometry, trigonometry, and astiX)nomy and its 
'^deductions for the use of our lord the King." There were polemical 
and civil architecture, geography, the sphere, mechanics, optics, etc. 
These subjects should have been included in the course of philosophy, 
and there were few students, even of the four rules and the aurea. The 
philosophical system was the scholastic, with its eternal snmiila.s and 
involved system of logic and its defective ideas of physics. The course 
lasted three years, the first two of which v/ere occupied with logic and 
the Aristotelian i^hilosophy. But the university would not have bene- 
fited much more if it had been modeled upon a Spanish university of the 
eighteenth century, because the mother country was on the low scien- 
tific level to which the deadly politics of the Austrians had reduced 
her. When Charles III urged the rectors of universities in Spain to 
reform education he was told that it was impossible to depart from 
the Aristotelian system or follow the innovati(ms of Galileo and Newton, 



040 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

because tliey were not in accord with inviolable tradition. Fnrtber- 
iiiore, it was not always possible to find suitable teachers in Cuba. 
For this reason the chair of mathematics was vacant for a long- time. 
Sometimes the Government refused to adopt very useful ideas on 
behalf of the university, either by negligence or ignorance, or for 
economical reasons. Thus the rector, in 1761, petitioned for the erection 
of a chair of experimental physics, whi(rh was refused, and two of 
mathematics, only one of which was granted. A new plan of study 
was drawn up, in Aiew of the pressing need of reform, but was allowed 
to lie unnoticed. In 1795 ' Don Jose Augustin Caballero made an 
address in the section of science and arts of the Sociedad Economica, 
in whicli he deplored the backward condition of education, which, he 
said, retarded and embarrassed the progress of the arts and sciences, 
without, however, any fault on the part of the teachers, who could 
only obey and execute their instructions. On motion of Senor Cabal- 
lero a representation was made to the King, by a committee of the 
society, of the necessity of reforming education in the island, begin- 
ning with the university. The committee declared, among other 
things, that no mathematics was taught, nor chemistry, nor practical 
anatomy. General Las Casas supported this m.otion, but the Govern- 
ment took no action. The same indifference, or worse, was manifested 
by the Spanish Government in other parts of America. It refused to 
permit the foundation of academies, or universities, or chairs of math- 
ematics, law or pilot schools (the latter being pure luxuries, the decree 
said). The cacique Don Juan Cirillo de Castilla endeavored during 
thirty years to obtain permission to establish a college for Indians in 
his native country, but died finally in Madrid without obtaining it. 
The archbishop of Guatemala left money by his Avill for estaWishing a 
chair of moral philosophy, but the minister directed the money to be sent 
to Spain, it having been improperly devised, as he declared. Charles 
[V prohibited the establishment of the University of Morida in Mara- 
caibo on the ground that he did not deem it expedient that enlighten- 
ment should become general in America. There were other instances 
of the same poli(!y in Chile and Peru; and yet, notwithstanding all 
these restrictions, Humboldt observed " a great intellectual movement 
and a youth endowed with a rare faculty for learning the sciences — a 
sure sign of tlie i)olitical and moral revolution that was in preparation." 
In Santiago de Cuba the seminary of San Basilio Magno was founded 
by Bishop Francisco Geronimo Valdes in 1722, for ecclesiastical studies, 
with an endowment of 12,000 pesos. This establishment, however, did 
not conse into operation until the latter part of the last century. More 
important wns the foundation of the college and seminary of San Carlos 
and San Ambrosio in Havana in 1773, which was not destined exclu- 
sively for tlie education of ecclesiastics, but included three courses of 
philosophy and letters preparatory to, and besides, the higher faculties 
of theology, law, and mathematics, the last two of which, however, were 
not opened until the beginning of the present century. 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 941 

Education being in sucli an unsatisfactory condition^ it is not to be 
expected that literature and science should have received much encour- 
agement in the three centuries preceding the present. Mitjaues, how- 
evev. shows that printing was introduced in Santiago de Cuba in 1698, 
but was soon discontinued, not to reappear for a century. In Havana 
])ractically no printing was done until 1720, and then only on an insig- 
uilicant scale. Poetry appeared iu the sixteenth century in the form 
of a comedy with the strange title "The good in heaven and the wicked 
on earth," whicli was presented on St. John's day and was long remem- 
bered for otlier reasons than the merits of the play. The names of 
several versifiers, with the subjects of their i)oems and criticisms of 
tlieir styles, are given in Mitjanes's work, from which it appears that 
they suffered from the pedantry, mysticism, and affectation with 
which readers of some of the English poetry of the seventeenth century 
are familiar, and they were imitators of Spanish writers of the period. 
The attacks of the buccaneers upon Cuban towns were frequent in the 
seventeenth century and the conflicts with them formed the subject of 
some of these early poems, while earthquakes furnished an occasional 
themein the following century, which was sometimes humorously treated. 
But about the middle of tlie last century more serious literary work 
begins to appear with the account by Bishop Morell of the English 
attempts in America and his history of the island and the church of 
Cuba, which work is lost, and Arrate's history of Cuba, which remained 
in manuscript until 1830, Avhen it was published by the Sociedad 
Econ(5mica. It gives the history of the island down to 17G1, but is not 
now of importance. The work of two other historians, Urratia and 
Valdes, are criticised by Mitjanes, who closes his review of this period 
with notices of certain preachers who were celebrated for their elo- 
Cjuence. In 1789 there was jirinted at Havana a work on natural history 
by Don Antonio Parra which was illustrated by drawings, there being 
no good engravers in the island at that time. The work appears to have 
been of no great merit, but its account of the fishes gave it Aalue. The 
author was commissioned by the (lovernment and the botanical garden 
of Madrid to make collections for the cabinet of natural history at 
Madrid. 

The second epoch in the intellectual history of Cuba began with the 
administration of Don Luis de las Casas, whose name is held in grate- 
ful remembrance by Cubans, and who inaugurated a new era by his 
zealous and noble enthusiasm in promoting intellectual and educational 
activity. He founded the first literary i^eriodical and the Sociedad 
Economica (sometimes called Patriotica) de Habaiia, which has been 
the first mover in all the advances in the material interests and educa- 
tion iu the island. With him cooperated an eminent physician. Dr. 
Romay; Arango, the distinguished writer on economics; Caballero; 
Peualver, archbishop of Guatemala; and many others. The So(;iedad 
Economica was charged by a royal order with the care of education in 



942 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

Cuba. All iuveutory was taken of the primarj' schools in 1793 and a 
deplorable state of affairs was found. In Havana there were only 39 
schools, 32 of which were for girls, and the iustruction was of the 
worst, nothing but reading" being taught in many of them which were 
in charge of colored women. The societj' then founded two free schools 
for the poor of both sexes. The society met with much opjiosition, in 
part from Bishop Trespalacios, who was envious of Las Casas, but it 
succeeded in founding schools with the help of the religious orders, 
particularly the school of the Beneficencia in 1799 and the Ursulines 
in 1803. It endeavored to establish mem.bers of the order of San 
Sulpicio, which had met with such success in education in Xew Orleans, 
but without result. Outside the capital, gratuitous instruction for the 
people did not exist except in isolated cases, due to individual efforts, 
principally of the clergy. In 1801 the sociedad took another school 
census and found the number of schools in the city to be 71, with 2,000 
pupils, most of which were not under the Government and were taught 
by ignorant colored women who had neither method nor order. Ilecog- 
niziiig these fatal defects, the society endeavored to induce the Gov- 
ernment to issue regulations reforming the schools and j)rovidiug 
faithful, competent, and interested teachers, but without result. In 
181<) the section of education was formed and the Government granted 
$32,000 for primary instruction, and at this time some improvement in 
the condition of this branch was made. But notwithstanding the 
efforts of individuals, the funds were insutlicientfor the growing needs, 
and some of the new schools had only an ephemeral existence. 

^Secondary and superior education. — The society also devoted its ener- 
gies to opening new brandies of study in higher education. In 1793 it 
was proi)Osed to found a chair of chemistry, and a subscription of 
$24,015 was immediately raised, but owing to the difficulty of finding a 
professor in Euroi)e the chair was not filled until 1819. The apparatus 
was brought from l^urope, and after some delay quarters for a labora- 
tory were found in the hospital of San Ambrosio. Tlie first professor 
was Don Jose Tasso. 

The society in 1791 formed a i>lan of secondary instruction which 
included mathematics, drawing, physics, chemistry, natural history, 
botany, and anatomy. (The date and scope of this plan are note- 
worthy. Its spirit is quite modern.) The creation of a botanic garden 
was proposed in 1795, but the jdan did not meet with such enthusiasm 
as the chemical laboratory, which, it was hoped, might be of use to the 
sugar industry. The course of anatomy was opened in 1797. In this 
same year a real revolution took place in the instruction in philosophy 
at the Colegio Semiuario de San Carlos, the old Aristotelian i>hilosophy 
becoming replaced by modern methods in the lectures on logic of 
Caballero. I>ut in 1811, when Felix Var'ela took the chair of philosophy, 
the old system received its death blow, the names of modern thinkers 
became familiar in the schools, and their doctrines were freely exam- 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO IJICO. f*43 

iiied. The .students were taught to use their reason as a guide, and to 
ignore all the useless (^nibbles and confused terminology of the scho- 
lastic philosophy. One of his pupils, afterwards well known in Cuba. 
Bon Jose de La Luz, said of this teacher, ''^He was the first who tauglit 
us to think." He also used Spanish instead, of Latin in his lectures, 
retaining the latter only one day in the week, in order that its use 
might not be forgotten. Part of his Institutions of Eclectic rhik)sophy 
were published in Spanish. In physics Yarela was also an esteemed 
professor, but later on this chair at the college was filled by Jose 
Antonio Saco, who followed in brilliant lectures, day by day, the most 
recent discoveries made in Europe. The Government having ordered 
in 1813 that political economy should be taught in the universities, the 
Sociedad Ecouoinica established a chair of this subject in San Carlos 
in 1818, which was supported by voluntary subscriptions. The new 
spirit was shown further by a change in the law course from an excess- 
ive devotion to the study of the Eoman digests to the fuller study of 
Spanish law. At this period medicine, which, as we shall see, received 
such i)reeminent attention at a later period, was far behind the age. 
Until 182-4 there was no chair of surgery, and cliemistry and philosophy 
were twenty years behind the times. The promoters of superior instruc- 
tion in the beginning of the new epoch, which Mitjanes puts between 1790 
and 1820, were Las Casas, Bishop Espado, and the intendent Eamiiez, 
who was mainly instrumental in organizing the instruction in chemis- 
try and other scientific branches, with the constant cooperation of the 
Sociedad Ecomomica. The results of the education of these thiity 
years could hardly be expected to show until after the close of that 
period. During this time a large number of newspapers and periodi- 
cals appeared, owing to the liberty granted to the press, and in some 
of these appeared important critical and historical papers by men of 
information and ability. The names of Eomay, Caballero, and Arango 
appear as essayists, and the historian Yaldes published a part of his 
history in 1813, which Mitjanes criticises somewhat severely. These 
periodicals, and particularly the one published under the auspices of 
the society, furnished a medium for the budding poets of the new era 
to display themselves, and the drama received new editions. Many of 
the poets of this period, whose gifts and utterances Mitjanes discusses 
with apparent discrimination, it can be seen arc well worthy of note^ 
and they bring a real culture to aid their native talent. It would 
hardly be worth while to give a bare list of their names and poems. 
Mitjanes's criticisms, beside.-^, are quite technical, and bear upon versifi- 
cation and other literary features of the poems. 

In the second period of the new epoch — from 1820 to 1812 — the Soci- 
edad Economica, always in the vanguard of the intellectual movement, 
begau to find the fruits of its earlier efforts in the works of the younger 
men v,ho had profited by them, and in 1830 a committee on history was 
formed and another on literature. The Government Avas now in far 



944 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

otber Lands tliaii those of Las Casas aud did its best iu the person of 
General Tacon to suppress the new political and economical views, 
mainly, it is true, on account of articles which appeared in the journals 
published under the auspices of the society. Still, iu 1833, by virtue of 
a royal order, the committee on literature constituted itself an inde- 
pendent academy which encouraged or founded literary periodicals. Its 
sessions were the place of meeting for all the loading men in Cuba who 
were interested iu letters and new ideas, and it collected a valuable 
library. In this period appeared the first really great Cuban poet, 
Heredia, whose genius was recognized in Europe, and one of whose 
poems, "Niagara," was translated into English by Bryant. His life was 
a curious comment on the Spanish rule in Cuba. He was born at San- 
tiago de Cuba in 1803. At 8 years of age his teacher, the Dominican 
Francisco Javier Caro, pronounced him to be a good Latinist and an 
excellent translator of Horace, and at 10 he had written poems which 
attracted the attention of literary men. He went to Havana for the 
first time in 1817 and to Mexico in 1819, whence he returned to Havana 
ui)on the death of his father, in 1820. He took there the degree of 
bachelor of law, aud iu 1823 was an advocate iu Puerto Principe. 
Thence he removed to Matanzas where he became involved with the 
revolutionary agents of Spanish America, and, falling under suspicion, 
was obliged to leave Cuba. He passed three years in the United States 
and the rest of his life in Mexico, where he was appointed assistant 
secretary of state, and afterwards was a Judge of the supreme court 
and member of the Senate. His lyrical poems, published in New York 
in 1825, when he was only 22 years old, which have been republished 
in Philadelphia, New York, London, Paris, Hamburg, Madrid, aud Bar- 
celona, and admired in all the civilized countries of the world, placed 
him at once among the noted poets of the century. 

Passing over other lyric poets of less note — Milaues, Eamon de Pa,lina, 
and others whose works Mitjanes discusses — tbenext most noted name 
in the Cuban poetry of this period is that of Placido, whose fame, per- 
haps, is partly due to the circumstances of his origin aud his tragic 
death. It was the opinion, however, of some critics that Placido was 
the most gifted of all the Cuban poets, but the misfortunes of his defect- 
ive education, and his birth in a despised class, which condemned him 
to live in a social sphere far beneath that which was the due of his 
intellectual superioritj', were suflicient to dull his inspiration. His 
poverty, too, compelled him often to write without other incentive, and 
the political oppression, which was a constant menace to everyone, was 
a double weight upon him until he fell a martyr to it in 1814. Placido 
was a mulatto, and no one born out of a slave holding country, where 
color is the badge of slavery and marks the social pariah, can under- 
stand how that circumstance placed at once an impassable barrier 
between the unhappy victim of it and all those who would otherwise 
have been intellectually congenial to him. An article by Mr. W. H. 



EDUCATION IX CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 945 

Huilbut, ill the Xortli Americau Eeview for January, 1849, iipou the 
"Poetry of Spauish-Ainerica," writteii when tlie memory of Heredia 
and Phicido was still fresh, and Milanes was still alive, describes con- 
temporary Cuba as follows: 

Ail tlio avenues to the public miud are guarded with uiirelaxiag watchfulness, and 
the patriotism of Cuba, deuied anj' enlarged and popular field of action, is coiupelled 
to pour itself into the heart of the people through strains of stirring poetry from 
the lips of men prepared for the martyrdom as well as for the championship of free- 
dom. And imprisonment, exile, and death have, indeed, been the meeds of these 
hero bards, who speak always earnestly and from their hearts, in the words of brave 
men who have counted the cost of their devotion. It is strange, indeed, that so 
little should be known among us of an intellectual and spiritual life so uearlj* allied 
to the best thought and feeling of our own country. 

The author speaks sympathetically of the career of Heredia, who as 
a man was held in honorable remembrance for the integrity, generosity, 
and amiability of his character, and whose suft'erinos testified more 
loudly than his words to the depth and strength of aifection with which 
he clung to the best hopes of his country. Thoughts of sorrow or of 
hope for Cuba underlie almost all his poems, translations of passages 
from which are given in the article referred to. Placido, whose name 
was Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdes, was born at Matanzas in 1800. 
" His education was of the rudest kind ; nearly ail the learning that he 
ac([uired he owed to the impulses of his own mind, followed out with 
all the energy of an indomitable will," and he had established his repu- 
tation when he was called upon to play the higher parts of a hero and 
a martyr. An insurrection broke out among the slaves in 1844, and' 
Placido was accused of being the organ of communication between the 
insurgents and the IJritish consul, who was suspected of favoring them^ 
The insurrection was sui)pressed with a savage ferocity which was 
fresh in the minds of the readers of the article in the Xorth American. 
Placido was condemned to death, and he awaited his fate with entire 
composure. '' In the intervals of the duties which crowded upon his^ 
shortening life he poured out the emotions and aspirations of his soul' 
in poetry; and these death songs, full of undying truth, have written: 
themselves deeply and forever on the hearts of his countrymen. One 
of them, especially, his 'Prayer to God,' comjiosed the day before his 
execution, was eagerly learned and recited by the young men of Matan- 
zas, and has been universally considered his finest production." A 
translation of the poem is then given, of which the translator says 
that "it is difticult to convey into English words the fire and force of 
expression of this noble poem." The night before his execution Placido 
addressed a farewell letter to his wife and a "farewell," in poetry, to 
his mother, and the next morning passed through the streets with his 
fellow victims " with a serene face and an unwavering step and chant- 
ing his 'Prayer' with a calm, clear voice" — a spectacle which, in other- 
times and countries, would have furnished inspiration for heroic verse. 
Prone as we of English descent are to suspect the contrary, I'lacido's:- 
ED 98 GO 



94() EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

conduct at this supreme momeut was undoubtedly sincere and not 
theatrical. His ignoble birth, as well us the political subjection of the 
island, harrowed his soul, as is evident in the extracts given in this 
article we have used, e. g., in the " Sonnet to Greece,'' and the " Hymn 
to Liberty," written on the morning of his execution, which is thus ren- 
dered in the spirited translation by an anonj-mons writer: 

Liberty I I wait for tlioe 

To break this chain auci iliiugeon liar; 

1 hear thy spirit calling mo 
Deep in the frozen North, afar, 

With voice like God's, and visage like a star. 

Long cradled by the mountain wind, 
Thy mates the eagle and the storm, 

Arise I and from thy brov>- unbind 

The wreath that gives its starry form, 

And smite the strength that would thy grace deform I 

Yes, Liberty I thy dawning light, 

Obscured by dungeon bars, shall cast 
Its splendor on the breaking night, 

And tyrants, fleeing pab^ and fast. 

Shall tremble at thy gaze and stand aghast! ' 

Placido's poetry is of ethnological interest, as he was partly of African 
descent, although it is impossible to know of what tribe. Some of the 
slaves who were brought to Cuba at an earlier period came from a 
region where they had become mixed with Arabs, and could read and 
write. 

The article continues : 

The worksof Placido were suppressed by a vice-regal edict, and his name w;is covered 
with ofticial infamy; but by the inhabitants of Cuba the memory of this true son of 
the people will always 1)c gratefully cherished. Never have the rights of man found 
a more heroic martyr than in this despised and humble laborer, this pariah of soci- 
ety, bearing in his natural form and ctdor the badge of disgrace and servitude. 
Surely his death has not been in vain. It is by the fall of such victims that men's 
thoughts are turned against tyrants and their tyranny. Hundreds and thousands 
of human beings droop and die in dumb, vulgar misery, and the world's slumbcvs 
arc unbroken ; but let one hero be led out from among them to sacrifice, and his voice 
penetrates to the four corners of the earth. Yet a few years and it will be seen that 
Placido, like the greater Toussaint, fell not obscurely or alone, but encompassed by 
the most faithful and iinforgetting friends, beheld and remembered by "great allies,' 
— "By exultations, agonies. 
And love, and man's uncoui^uerablc riiiud." 

Wo liave been thus lengthy in this digression because of the date of 
the article (1849), the prophetic feelings of its author {who was a 

'Tennyson's ode to liberty, beginning " Of old sat Freedom on the heights," was 
written some dozen years before Placido's death. There is a resemblance between 
the ideas in each poem, but one has the academic polish while the other is the natural 
cry of genius. It is impossible to imagine that Tennyson, an English geiitlemau, 
accustomed to write in the midst of quiet and scholarly surroundings, could have 
written his ode if he had known that he was to be publicly executed a few iiours 
afterwards. 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 947 

South Carolinian), and because tlie episode of Placido's death marks 
an antiquated j)hase of historj- which has now disappeared from this 
side of the Atlantic. 

In other chapters of his interesting history Mitjanes gives a dis- 
criminating account of the dramatic writers, novelists, and narrative 
poetry from 1820 to 1842, which must be passed over to note activity 
in other directions. In history Eamon de la Sagras and Pezuela's works 
appeared in 1831 and 1842, respectively, the former being rather of a 
political-economical character, while the latter takes ui) the history of 
the island from the beginning, using the early authorities, and the 
Sociedad Economica published many memoirs upon historical as well 
as upon philosophical, medical, chemical, and botanical subjects. A 
noticeable feature of this period was the appearance of a large num- 
ber of periodicals which manifested a new political and intellectual 
activity. 

The political changes of 1820 in Spain had their eflccfc upon educa- 
tion. Upon the suppression of the convents the Government gave the 
chapel of one of the Augustine orders to the Sociedad Economica for 
establishing a normal school, and established a chair of constitutional 
law in the seminary of San Carlos, and in the university, but both the 
normal school and the new chairs were soon after supi)ressed by another 
political change in 1824, and the $32,000 which the section of education 
had received from the municipality for elementary education was also 
reduced, soon after which that section received its deathblow by the 
royal order of February 8, 1825, withdrawing the funds which had been 
allotted to it, in consequence of which it M-as no longer possible to 
maintain the new free schools. It is to be observed that during the 
reign of Ferdinand YII the university, which was more directly con- 
nected with the Madrid Government, suffered more than San Carlos, 
which was protected by the Sociedad Economica and the diocesan 
bishop, and it remained in a backward state until the Government 
commissioned Francisco de Arango to examine and report upon the 
condition of the institution, which task he accomplished, with the aid 
of those most interested in the needed reforms. His report, in 1827, 
led to the reforms embodied in the plan of 1842. The medical faculfj- 
meanwhile was reorganized and modernized, and philosophy also, in the 
hands of the new teachers, became a living force, the Freneli school 
(Cousin) being represented in the period from 1840 to 185f>. 

In primary and se(!ondary education a great advance was made in 
the private colleges. From 1827 to 1830 the convenient distinction was 
drawn between elementary and superior instruction and new colleges 
were established (five in number), in which tbe instruction was so excel- 
lent that it was said in 1830 that there was no longer any need to send 
young men abroad for their education. The professors in these colleges 
were well-known men of letters. 

As to free primary instruction, outside of Havana and JVIatanzas it 



948 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

was ill an exceedingly backward state. The census of 1833 sbowed tliat 
there were only 9,082 pupils registered in the schools of the whole 
island, and this figure is far above the number of those actually attend- 
ing. There were then 190,000 or 200,000 inhabitants under 15 years of 
age. The provinces of Puerto Principe and Santiago, with 250,000 or 
300,000 inhabitants each, had 1,408 and 991 pupils in school in 1810, 
respectively. In Villa Clara there was only one school from 1821 to 1834. 

The period from 1842 to 1868, the date of the beginning of tlie obsti- 
nate insurrection that lasted ten years, was prolific in poets and dram- 
atists, whose works Mitjaues criticises with discrimination, and we are 
astonished at the number of names, especially when we reflect tliat tlie 
entire population of Cuba was only 1,400,000 in 18G8, of which 800,000 
were white. Let anyone compare the literary activity in Havana with 
that of any city of equal size in the United States and he can judge 
of the singular intellectual activity manifested in the island. Upon 
scientific education and the sciences Mitjaues says nothing, but we can 
supplement this historical sketch by the official list of royal decrees 
and orders reorganizing public instruction, the origin of which, we have 
seen in the foregoing, was always due to the remonstrances or memo- 
rials or suggestions of the islanders, and never proceeded from the (iov- 
ernment itself. 

Secondarij and siqyerior Inst ruction.^ — The royal decrees concerning 
secondary and superior instruction in Cuba and Porto Rico during the 
first half of the century provided principally for making valid in Spain 
the titles of licentiate or doctor obtained in Cuba and Porto Rico. In 
1863 a general reform of ijublic instruction was effected, by virtue of 
which it was divided into primary, secondary, superior, and professional 
branches. In 1871 a decree jn^ovides that jirofessors of the University 
of Havana are eligible for i^rofessorships in Spain, which was followed 
in 1878 by a decree making the professorate in the colonies and the 
peninsula one body. 

In 1880, at the close of the ten-year insurrection., special schools, 
which had been called for by circumstances, such as the dental college 
of Havana, were created, besides societies of agriculture, industry, and 
commerce. In this year the minister for the colonies drew up a memo- 
rial of the unsatisfactory condition of public education in Cuba and 
Porto Rico, especially in regard to the university and institute of 
Havana. It recites that the first step toward secularizing education 
and assimilating it with that of Spain in that resi)ect was taken in 
1842, and that the assimilation was nearly complete by 1863 as far as 
legislation and form were concerned. But Cuba, lie adds, was not 
then prepared for so vast and centralized an organization, and many 
obstacles and delays arose that checked the proposed reform. The 
insurrection of 1868 interfered with education very seriously, inter- 



' From the Dicciouario tie Legislaciou delustraeciou Piiblica. Eduardo Orbauejo. 
Valladolid, 1893. 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 949 

ruptiiig' the studies and so making- it diificulfc or impossible for students 
to finish their courses, which, again, unfitted them to become teachers 
in the secondary schools which were soon after established all over tlie 
island. This state of things also interfered with the habilitation in 
the Peninsula of studies followed in Cuba, and so tended to separate 
the two countries in that res])ect. All these considerations led to the 
decree of June IS, 188!), reguhiting superior and secondary instruction, 
and coordinating those branches iu Cuba with the same grades in 
Spain established by the decrees of 1874 and order of 1875. One of 
the principal features of this decree was the article authorizing the 
establishment of a secondary institution in the capital of each Cuban 
province at the expense of the province or municipality, with a sub- 
vention from the Governor Genersil from the estimates for the island. 
In capitals where there were no public secondary institutes colleges of 
the religious orders might be substituted by the Governor-General, with 
the advice of the council. But the degrees granted by these private 
institutions were to be verified, as only the degrees of public institu- 
tions were recognized. In accordance with this decree an institute of 
secondary education was established in Porto Pico in 1882, there 
being already several in Ouba; an agricultural commission was organ- 
ized iu Cubii, and in 1885 a professional school was established in Porto 
Pico like those in Havana, where there were a nautical school, a pro- 
fessional school proper, fitting its students to practice chemistry and 
the mechanic arts, and an art school. In 1880 the following plan of 
studies was drawn up for the law faculty of the University of Havana, 
which we giv^e here for the sake of showing the scope of the studies in 
that department. There are two sections, one of the candidates for 
the licentiate and the other for the doctor's degree. 

Section of the Hceiitiale. 

Metap]iysics. Principals of canon law. 

General ami Spanish litcratnre. Political and administrative law. 

Critical history of Spain Elements of finance. 

Elements of law. Public international law. 

Political economy and statistics. Private international law. 

General history of Spanish law. Proceedings iu civil, criminal, canon, and 

Priufiples of Roman law. administrative law, and theory aud 

Spanish law, civil, common, aud statute. practice of briefing public instru- 

Crimiual law. ments. 
Mercantile laAv of Spain and of the prin- 
cipal countries of Europe and America. 

Section of the doctorute. 

Philosophy of law. Principles of public law of ancient and 

Higher course of Roman law. moderu peoples. 

Church history and discipline. History of private law of aucieut and 

Public ecclesiastical law. moderu peoples. 

History aud critical examination of the Law literature, principally Spanish. 

princi])al treaties between Spain aud 

other powers. 



950 EDUCATION REPORT, 18S7-98. 

A similar reform was effected in the faculties of medicine and phar- 
macy of tlie University of Havana in 1887 by a royal decree which 
brought that faculty upon the level of a Spanish university. The plan 
of studies was as follows : 

Freparatory course. — Physics, advanced course; general chemistry; 
mineralogy and botany; zoology. 

These subjects were to be studied in the faculty of sciences and natural 
history. 

^Section of licentiates. — Descriptive anatomy and embryology; normal 
histology and histochemistry; technical anatomy, practice in dissec- 
tion, in histology and histo-chemistry; human physiology, theoretical 
and experimental ; private hygiene ; general pathology, with clinics and 
clinical iirelimiuaries; therapeutics, materia medica, with writing pre- 
scriptions, and hydrology, hydrotherapeutics, and electrotherapeutics; 
pathological anatomy; surgical pathology; topographic anatomy; prac- 
tice of medicine, with clinics; clinical surgery, medical pathology, clin- 
ical medicine; obstetrics and gynecology, with clinics; special course 
on the diseases of children, with clinics; public hygiene, with medical 
statistics and sanitary legislation; legal and toxicological medicine. 

Course for Hoctorate. — Critical history of medicine; public hygiene, 
advanced course, including a historical and geographical course of 
endemics and epidemics; biological chemistry with analysis; chemical 
analysis, especially of poisons. 

Lectures upon some of the above studies are appointed to be had every 
day during the course, others daily for a certain time, and others twice 
a week, according to the importance of the subject. 

The plan of studies for pharmacy included the preparatory course 
above given. Then follows: 

Course for licentiates. — Study of physical instruments and apparatus 
as applied to pharmacy, with exercises for i)ractice ; descriptive botany, 
with determination of medical plants; mineralogy and zoology applied 
to pharmacy, with the corresponding pharmaceutical material; inorganic 
chemistry applied to pharmacy, with exercises; vegetable materiii 
pharmaceutica; exercises in animal, vegetable, and mineral materia 
pharmaceutica; organic chemistry applied to pharmacy, with exer- 
cises; chemical analysis, particularly of foods, medicines, and poisons, 
with exercises; practical pharmacy and sanitary legislation. 

Course for doctors'' degree. — Biological chemistry, with analysis; criti- 
cal history of pharmacy and pharmaceutical bibliography. 

The decree specifies in what way the programme is to be carried out. 

This programme is essentially the same as that of a European 
university. 

As showing a disposition to adopt new features, it is important to note 
that the same decree that contains the above programme also directs 
that a chair of industrial mechanics and applied chemistry shall be 
created in the Havana Institute. This institute already possessed a 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO IIICO. !>51 

C'uair of experimeutal pliysics, while practical clieraistry and inechaiiics 
were taught iu the professional school. 

We give also the plan of studies of the faculties of philosophy aud 
letters and of sciences of the university as prescribed by royal order of 
1887, together with the attendance in 1888-89. As these studies are of 
a general nature they are not designed to fit students for professions like 
the special subjects in the law and medical faculties. The list shows 
the interest shown in such subjects. 

rroijramiiie of the Loyal University of Havana, tSSS-SP. 

FACULTV OF PniLOSOPHT AND LETTEKS. Number 

of students. 

General and Spanish literature 119 

General literature 7 

Sjianish literature 15 

Greek, first course 19 

Greek, second course 10 

Greek aud Latin literature 12 

General history, first course 19 

General history, second course 25 

Metaphysics, first course 132 

Metaphysics, second course 12 

Critical history of Spain 12-4 

HehrfAV 1 

Arabic 8 

.Esthetics 4 

History of philosophy 4 

Critical history of Spanish literature 5 

Sanscrit 5 

NOTK. — At the same time 21 students were classified in this faculty from private 
instruction, having passed their examinations, i. e., their degrees having been veri- 
fied, as explained in the decrees. Of these 21, 5 were examined in Porto Kico. 

FACULTY OF SCIENCES. 
General studies: 

JNIathematical analysis, first course 19 

Mathematical analysis, second course 7 

Geometry 19 

Analytical geometry 6 

Cosmography aud pliysics of the globe 8 

Advanced physics 137 

General chemistry 141 

General zoology 138 

Miueralogy and botany 138 

Lineal drawing 9 

Physico-mathematical sciences : 

Differential and integral calculus 2 

Theoretical mechanics 1 

Descriptive geometry 1 

Advanced experimental phy.sics 6 

Higher physics, first course 1 

Higher physics, second course 2 

Higher physics, experimental, first course 1 

Higher physics, experimental, second course 2 

Geodesy 1 

Mathematical physics 3 

Theoretical and practical astronomy 3 



952 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

Number 
Physirs iiiul clieMii.stry : of stiuleufs. 

luoryauic clieniiHtiy 4 

Exiierimental chemistry 4 

Organic chemistry, and exporiinental 8 

Drawing applied to iihysico-chemical scieuce 3 

Natural sciencfs, inclxidiug anatomy and animal and vegetable physiology, min- 
eralogy, zoography of vertebrates, articnlates, mollnsks, and zoophytes, phytography 
and botanical geography, drawing applied to natural history, comparative anatomy, 
and stratigraphic paleontology, 27 students in all. 

We give tlie progTamme of the Institute of Havana to illustrate the 
grade or scope of this class of instruction in Cuba. The programmes 
of the other provincial institutes are essentially similar to it, some of 
the commercial subjects being dropped or changed. 



Physiology and hygiene. 
Agriculture. 

Mercantile arithmetic and bookkeeping. 
Geography and commercial statistics. 
Political economy. 
Practical commercial exercises. 
Chemistry applied to the arts. 
Industrial mechanics. 
French, English, and German (two 
courses each). 



Latin and Spanish (two courses). 

Rhetoric and poetry. 

Geography. 

Spanish history. 

General history. 

Psychology, logic, and ethics. 

Arithmetic and algebra. 

Geometry and trigonometry. 

Physics. 

Chemistry. 

Natural history. 

This, it will be seen, is a very '' practical " course. 

The preparatory course of the professional school of the island of 
Cuba comprised arithmetic, algebra, linear drawiug, geometry, trigo- 
nometry, and ornamental drawing, while the professional course proper 
embraced topography, theoretical and practical surveying, topographical 
drawing, descriptive geometry, the mechanics of construction, strength 
of materials, construction of all kinds, building and architectural 
drawiug, international mercantile law, history of commerce, the mate- 
rials of commerce, cosmography, pilotage, and hand work. 

The school of painting and sculpture of Havana had 45J: students. 
The programme included elementary drawing, drawing from the antique, 
sculpture, landscapes in lead pencil, carbon, and oil, both copies and 
from nature; color drawing, claro-obscuro, copies of pictures; drawing 
from nature, from the living model, and original compositions. 

The programmes given above are too general to enable one to judge of 
the (juality of the instruction. For instance, Greek might cover Xeno- 
phon, or lectures on the tragic poets, or Homer, and geometry might 
include anything from elementary geometry up to that of three dimen- 
sions. The inaugural addresses, 1888-81), however, before the university, 
allow us to form an opinion. Thus the inaugural address in 1890 of Dr. 
Don Juan Vilaro y Diaz is a very able paper upon some points in evo- 
lution, which are supported by a large number of references to observa- 
tions by the author himself and other persons. They range, as usual, 
in the full exposition of the argument, from paleontological data down 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND POKTO PJCO. 053 

to variations in living species, and tlie essay is in support of natural 
selection. Tiie programmes at hand, while containing a plentiful amount 
of theoretical, mathematical, and physical subjects, have less applied 
science, such as electrical and mechanical engineering, than is found in 
the technological schools elsewhere, where manufactures and various 
industries make a demand for them. 

To complete this part of the subject we give tlie plan of studies of 
elementary sciiools taken from the Eesumeu de la legislacion de primera 
enseCanza virgente eu la isla de Cuba. JTabana, ISO.j. For Jose 
Estebiin Ijras. 

Tills plan is as follows for the lower grade: (1) Christian doctrine and 
sacred historj^ adapted for children; (2) reading; (3) writing; (4) ele- 
mentary Spanish grammar and orthography'; (5) elementary arithmetic, 
including weights and measures; (C) elements of agriculture, industry, 
and commerce, to be varied according to locality. 

Primary superior instruction embraces, besides an amplificatiou of 
the foregoing: (1) Elements of geometry, linear drawing ar.d survey- 
ing; (2) rudiments of history and geography, especially Spanish; (3) 
elements of physics and natural history adapted to the more common 
necessities oi life. In schools for girls of corresponding grades, articles 
G of the elementary, and 1 and 3 of the primaiy superior, are replaced 
by (1) women's work; (2) elements of drawing applicable to the same, 
and (3) elements of domestic hygiene. 

The same authority gives the following brief sketch of the history of 
public elementary education iu Spain and the colonies: 

Frimary instruction. — The laws and royal orders and decrees in accord- 
ance therewith affecting elementary education iu the colonies are sub- 
stantially those regulating education in Spain. Up to 1821 public 
primary education was not a function of the State and was not regu- 
lated by any general law in Spain. 

On June 20 of that year the Cortes decreed that public primary 
instruction should be free and that a school of that character should be 
established in every town of 100 inhabitants, and that there should be 
one school for every r>00 inhabitants in cities [thus antedating the pas- 
sage of the similar law in France by twelve years]. Following this was 
the plan of February 16, 1825, the provisional plan of July 21, 1838, and 
the royal decree of September 23,1847. On September 0, 1857, was 
promulgated the law which still prevails. Besides the foregoing, the 
royal decree of February 23, 1883, made primary education obligatory. 
Primary education is obligatory for all Spaniards. The fathers and 
guardians, or others having charge of children, shall send them to the 
public schools from their sixth to their ninth year of age unless they 
furnish the same grade of instruction at home or in some private school. 
(Plan of studies of December 7, 1880.) The Spanish Cortes in 1813 pro- 
posed to make reading and writing a condition of citizenship, a measure 
which excited Jefferson's admiration. 



954 EDUCATION REPORT, 1X97-98. 

In Cuba four general dispositions aftecting jiublic instruction have 
been i>romulgated, following the law of the Peninsula. These are the 
general plan of 1S42, the plan of studies of 18G3, the organic regula- 
tion of primary instruction of 1871, and the plan of 1880, which now 
l)revails. The plan of 1812, for Cuba and Porto Ivico, was based on 
the peninsula law of 1838, and the later ones on that of 1857. The 
plan of studies of December 7, 1880, is that which prevails now on gen- 
eral points. In 1890 normal schools were created, in 1891 the secretary- 
ships of the provincial committees for education were provided, and in 
1892 special school deposits for primary instruction were established. 

As everyone knows, it is impossible to form a correct idea of the real 
condition of education from royal orders and decrees, and plans of 
studies which make, or may make, a deceptive appearance, and we there- 
fore present the testimony of competent witnesses who have had oppor- 
tunities of observing the condition of education in Cuba from about 
1800 down to the most recent years. 

Humboldt, in his personal narrative, says of the Cubans of his time 
that intellectual cultivation was almost entirely restricted to the class 
of the whites and was as unequally distributed as the population. 

Tlie liist society of the ILivanah resemblea, in ease ami politeness of mauuers, tlie 
society of Cadiz and of the richest commercial to\vn8 of Europe; but (luitting- the 
capital, or the neighboring plantations iuhabitrd by rich proprietors, a striking con- 
trast to this state of partial and local civilization presents itself in the simplicity 
of manners that prevails in the insulated farms and small towns. The Havancros 
were the first among the rich inhabitants of the Spanish colonies -who visited Spain, 
France, and Italy, and at the llavanah the people ^verc the best informed of the 
politics of Europe and the springs put in movement in courts to sustain or over- 
throw a ministry.' 

And of the educational institutions he says: 

At the Havanah the university, with its chairs of theology, jurisprudence, medi- 
cine, and mathematics, established since 1728; the chair of political economy, 
founded in 1818; that of agriculture and botany; the museum and the school of 
descriptive anatomy, due to the enlightened zeal of Don Alexander Ramirez; the 
puplii- library; the free school of drawing and painting; the national school; the 
Lancasterian schools, and the botanic gardens are institutions partly new and partly 
old. 

The Countess Merlin, who was a native of Havana, but had been 
absent in Paris nniny years, returned there and published three vol- 
umes of lettersj with the title " La Havane," in 1814. She says of 
education in Havana at that period that it produced two contradictory 
impressions— a consciousness of undeniable progress, which was 
increasing, and a lively sense of relative inferiority. There Averc 
extreme eagerness for knowledge, quick intelligence, minds well pre- 
l)ared to receive it, and every ray of light from Europe was greeted 
with enthusiasm. With all this there were great imperfections, lacuncv, 
in the organization of public instruction and in the tendencies of pri- 



1 Vol. XII, p. 157, of Miss Williams's translation, 1829. 



EDUCATION IN CUBA. AND PORTO LMCO. 055 

vate educatiuii, and tlie neglect and indifference of the (loveriiment 
was an obstacle to progress. The Cubans kept tliemselves informed of 
every thing educational and scientific that was going on in Europe, and on 
the death of Ferdinand Yll, when aristocratic Spain endeavored to imi- 
tate the culture and civilization of France and England, some Havanese, 
profiting by the movement in the mother country, obtained i^ermission 
to form a literary "Academic,'' a name which, perhaps, was not the 
best title that could be found, but which promised a better intellectual 
future. But the Captain-General saw in this institution a germ of polit- 
ical reform and danger, and it was dissolved. More than once educated 
young men have asked x)ermissiou to found and maintain chairs of lit- 
erature and science, but iii vain; the same fear prompted the Govern- 
ment to withhold its consent. In the absence of satisfactory means of 
education at home many fathers of families sent their sons abroad for 
their education. A.s soon as this was known at Madrid a royal order 
came directing the parents to recall their sons and forbidding them to 
seiul them abroad in the fature. This order eventually fell into desue- 
tude. Enterprising men then obtained i^ermission to found colleges 
and maintain them at their own expense. The lower classes, however, 
were entirely without elementary instruction, and the Government 
refused to establish a single school at its own expense. When the sons 
of wealthy families could only obtain an education with difficulty, and 
at great expense, how could the children of the jjoor obtain any educa- 
tion whatever without public schools and teachers maintained by the 
Government? 

This situation, which was better suited to produce assassins and bandits 
than citizens, aroused the interest of some of the Cuban patriots, who 
formed a society called the Society of the Friends of the Country, which, 
having no funds but the individual subscrii)tions of the members, could 
accomplish little. Primary schools, therefore, were still fewinl8i4. In 
183G, with a population of 417,545 free (colored and white) persons in 
the Province of Havana, only 0,0S2 attended school. Of tliat popula- 
tion there vrere 99,599 children from 5 to 15 years of age. In a pre- 
vious period there was even less instruction, and in 183G there were 
90,517 children absolutely without education. In 1844 there were still 
more, because the population had increased and the primary schools, 
being always without resources, could not keep up with it. As nothing 
could be obtained from the Government, the Cubans resorted to theaters 
and masked balls to raise money for founding schools. The Sociedad 
Patriotica, or Economica, v/hicli was founded in 1793 by Governor Las 
Casas, who gave liberally of his own fortune for founding schools, began 
now to bear fruit and the situation was improving. The countess men- 
tions a museum of natural history as existing in 1844, and the school 
of design, which was established in 1815 by Eamirez, and adds that 
there were no attempts at intellectual development which did not meet 
an active and disinterested sympathy among the Creoles. Every one 



956 EDUCATION REPORT, 1S97-98. 

of their sons brought back from his foreign travels something to advance 
civilization in the island. The number of able and distinguished men 
was then larger than could have been expected, and included savants 
and writers on political economy who kept abreast of all European 
progress. Besides literary men, including i)oets, she gives the names of 
Saco, Jose do la Luz, and Del Mante, and concludes by saying that one 
curious consequence of the absence of primary instruction simultane- 
ously with the advanced condition of higher education was ta be seen 
in the juxta-position, in strange contrast, of the oldest traditions and a 
modern college, and journals written in elegant style, published in ar 
city where the old Castilian language of Cervantes and Lope de Vega 
V7as still spoken. 

In 1855 J. J. Ampere (son of the French jdiysicist whose name is given 
to a ''law" in electro-magnetism) published an account of his travels in 
America, in the course of which he visited Havana and says of the library 
of the university that it contained the recent I'rench scientilic treatises, 
the works of Cousin, etc. There was at that time no great literary and 
scientitic movement at Havana ; nevertheless, there was a marked prog- 
ress in the number of students in the schools. He speaks of a school 
of mechanic arts with 240 students, and 15 foundations for the orphans 
of officers and families who had emigrated from the mainland. The 
governor, General Concha, did much for this school. 

In 1859 Mr. Kichard H. I)ana visited Havana and wrote as follows 
about education as he saw it. His opinion is the more valuable, as his 
observations were made during a vacation trii), and he must have had 
H irvard in mind while making comi)arisons: 

A.s to oiliication, I have no doubt that a good cducatiou iu medicine aud a respect- 
able course ofiustructiou iu Roman and Spanish hiw and iu the natural sciences can 
1)0 obtained at the University of Havana, and that a fair collei^nato education, after 
the manner of th:' Latin races, can be obtained at the Jesuit College, the Seminario, 
and other institutions in Ha\ana and in the other large cities ; and the Sisters of the 
Sacred Heart have a nourishing school for girls at Havana, but the general elementary 
education of the ps-ople is in a very low state. Tlie scattered life (tf planters is unfa- 
vorable to public day schools, nay, almost inconsistent with their existence. The 
richer inhabitants scud their children abroad or to Havana, but the )niddle aud lower 
classes of whites can not do tliis. The tables show that of the free ^vhite children 
not more than 1 iu 63 attend any school, while in the I'ritish West India islands the 
proportion is 1 in the 10 or 20. 

The life in the country, the free, careless monteros or guijaros who 
hardly need to work, whose j)rincipal occupation is cock-fighting and 
who can see no need of schools, doubtless had much to do, as Mr. Dana 
noticed, with the low number of elementary schools. 

But Havana, which at that time had a population of 150,000, was 
admirably equipped for secondary and university studies, and a Avriter 
in the National Quarterly Eeview for 18GG (vol. 14) said of it: 

Far from being behind the age iu the provision which it made for education, there 
is not one of oiir cities, not even the modern Athens, which excels it iu that respect. 
Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and one or two other American cities have, 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND POKTO RICO. 957 

indeed, better pulilic schools than Havana. They afford better facilities for the 
education of the i^oor. But the higher educational institutions of Havana are on an 
extensive and liberal scale. We must admit, on due examination, that we have no 
institutions that are equal to their free school of design aind painting, or their free 
school of mathematics. The professors in each of these schools have been selected 
for their superior qualifications in different countries of Europe, a large proportion 
of them being Germans, French, and Italians. If it still seems incredible that 
Havana has some educational institutions which ai'e superior to those of Boston or 
New York, Ave ask is the fact more incredible that the same city has a line botanical 
garden in which botany is taught in all its branches by professors who have gradu- 
ated at the famous Jardin des Plantes, in Paris, and other sinular schools, while we 
haA^e no botanical garden worthy of the name? The capital of Cuba has also a tirst- 
class university, one Avhich maj' be compared to that of the city of New York, and 
which has separate chairs for jurisprudence, medicine, chemistrj', theology, compara- 
tive anatomy, and agricultural botauj'. 

In 1SS7 Professor Fronde, tlie historian, visited Cuba, and gives the 
following interesting and appreciative account of the well-known Jesuit 
College at Havana, which has been especially famous as the seat where 
the celebrated meteorological observations of Father Yinez were made. 
He says of the Jesuits: 

They alone among the Catholic clergy, though they live poorly and have no 
endowment, exert themselves to provide a tolerable education for tlie middle and 
upper classes. * * * Their college had been an enormous monastery. * * « 
The Jesuits have taken possession of the largest convents much as a soldier crab 
becomes the vigorous tenant of the shell of some lazy sea snail. They have a col- 
lege there where there are 400 lads and young men who pay for their education; 
some hundreds more are taken out of charity. The Jesuits conduct the whole, and 
do it all unaided, on their own resources. And this is far from all that they do. They 
keep on .a level with the age; they are men of learning; tliey are men of science; 
they are the royal Bociety of Cuba. They have an observatory in the college, and 
the Father Yifiez, of whom I have spoken, is in charge of it. His name is familiar to 
students of meteorological science, and he has supplemented and corrected the 
accepted law of storms by careful observation of ^yest India hurricanes. The libra- 
ries were well furnished, but the books were chiefly secular and scientific. The 
sleeping gallery was divided into cells, open at the toj") for ventilation, with bed, 
table, chest of drawers, and washing api)aratus, all scrupulously clean. Everything 
was good of its kind down to the gymnastic courts and swimming bath. The cost 
of the whole establishment was defrayed out of the payments of the richer students 
managed economically for the benefit of the rest. From the courtyard we turned 
into a narrow staircase, up which Ave climbed until Ave reached the roof on and under 
Avh'ch the father had his lodgings and his observing machinery. Cases stood around 
the wall containing self-registering instruments of the most advanced modern type, 
each Avith its paper band unrolling slowly under clockwork, Avhile a pencil 
noted upon it the temperature, the ozone, the electricity. He took us out to a shed 
ann)ng the roof tiles, Avhere he kept his large tidescope, his eqiiatorial and his transit 
instruments, not on the gi'eat scale of State-supi)orted obserA'atories, but with every 
thing Avhich was really essential. He had a laboratory, too, and workshop, with all 
the recent appliances. He Avas a practical optician and mechanic. He managed and 
repaired his own machinery, observed, made his notes, and made his reports to the 
societies Avith Avhich ho was in correspondence, all by himself. 

At my companion's suggestion he gaA'e me a copy of his book on hurricanes. It 
contains a record of laborious Journeys which he made to the scene of the deA'asta- 
tions of the last ten vears. The scientific value of the father's Avork is recognized 



958 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

by the liigheat authorities, though I can not venturo even to attempt to explain 
■what he has done. * * * As we took leave the marf|uis kissed his old master's 
brown hand. I rather envied him the privilege. 

Mr. K n. Dana's visit to the Belen (Bethlehem) was iu 1859. He 
described it as a grotip of buildings of the usual yellow or tawny 
color, covering a good deal of ground, and of a thoroughly monastic 
character. 

It was first a Franciscan monastery, thou .a barrack, and now (1859) has been 
given by the Government to the Jesuits. * * * These jierform every office from 
the highest scientific investigations and instruction down to the lowest menial 
office in the care of the children. It is only three years since they established 
themselves in Havana, but in that time they have formed a school of 200 boarders 
and 100 day scholars, built d(n-mitories and a commons hall, restored the church and 
made it the most fully attended in the city. Father Antonio Cabre, a very young 
man of a spare frame and intellectual countenance, with hands so white and so thin 
and eyes so bright and cheeks so pale, is at the head of the department of mathe- 
matics and astronomy. He took ns to his laboratory, his observatory, and his 
apparatus of philosophical instruments. These, I am told, are according to the 
latest inventions and in the best style of French and German workmanship. There 
was a cabinet of shells, the beginning of a museum of natural history, already 
enriched with most of the birds of Cuba, and a cabinet of the woods of the island 
in small blocks, each piece being polished on one side and rough on the other. 

The recent condition of elementary education in Cuba is ably dis- 
cussed by Senor Manuel Yaldes Eodriguez in a pami)hlet with the 
title La Educacion ro|)ular en Cuba, which is a lecture of the course 
given by the Eeal Sociedad Economica in 1891, a society v/hich has 
such an honored name in the intellectual history of tlie island. This 
work is published together with another by the same author on The 
Problem of Education, which consists mainly of articles contributed to 
El Pais and the Pevista Cubana, reviewing the work of the interna- 
tional congress of education and the educational exhibition at Paris 
in 1889. 

In this review the author presents to his fellow-countrymen the 
results brought out by the discussions and exhibits at Paris and indi- 
cates how the Cuban elementary school system could be made to profit 
by them. He i)oints out certain essential differences between the 
Cuban social life and that of other countries and that such differences 
should be taken into account iu reorganizing the Cuban schools. He 
takes up different countries — Germany, France, the United States, ate — 
and gives a summary of their elementary instruction, the material of 
instruction, and statistics. He is i^articularly impressed with the union 
between the common schools and the domestic and political life of the 
United States, whereby the school is not an interruption of, but a 
factor in, both, and he pointed out the antagonism thiit often exists in 
Cuba between the elementary school and the home, and between the 
unfortunate school teachers and the alcalde. 

In the second paper Senor Eodriguez, who is a teacher by profession, 
but is also a man of reading and well inforined in modern philosophical 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO lilCO. 959 

and pedagogical ideas, proceeds to discuss tbe actual coudition of ele- 
mentary instruction in Cuba. He first calls particular attention to the 
precocity' of Cuban children, whose faculties ripen early but soon lose 
their freshness, and then gives a pedagogical and psychological discus- 
sion of intellectual, moral, and social education, in which he notices 
the vievrs of various writers — Herbert Spencer, Herbart, Pestalozzi, 
the criticisms of Tolstoi — and in the section upon social education he 
takes occasion again to call attention to the close union between the 
elementary school and private and public life in the United States, but 
at the same time he refers to the crying evil of bad literature which 
the public school children of the United States are led to read. He 
quotes from the report of the association of teacliers in oSTew Yorli in 
1889 in which is a quotation from one of the most distinguished peda- 
gogues of America, to the effect that many American boys would be 
better off morally and physically if tliey never had learned to read, and 
he comments upon certain similar evils in Cuba. He then speaks of 
the actual condition of primary schools in Cuba, and says that there 
are practically none. The number of them has increased, he says, but 
the i^rincipal fact in connection with them is their creation and inser- 
tion in the budget. They are neglected by the Government, which 
j)roviiles no inspectors; by the local juntas, whose members often do 
not know where they are; by the fathers of families, who do not believe 
in the gratuitous service, and by the teachers themselves, who have 
often to go unpaid. 

In 18G9 the Government closed G4 schools in Havana, and only in 
187L* did it reopen 32 of them. Four more were afterwjirds established, 
besides 8 for colored people. 

But the conditions of these schools were deplorable. The buildings 
could not accommodate the pui>ils allotted to them; some had no class 
rooms, so that the attendance in some cases was not over 20. The 
civil governor, Seiior Eodriguez Batista, did his best to increase the 
attendance, but, as many teachers reumrked, neither the limited accom- 
modations of the buildings, nor the absolute want of teaching material, 
nor the general conditions of elementary instruction, warranted the 
attendance of the required number of pupils. It would be a great 
injustice to impute such a lamentable state of things to the conduct of 
the teachers. On the contrary, they manifest an exceptional and sin- 
cere disposition corresponding to the loftj' ends of their mission, but 
thej^ are extremely poor, and some are in danger of starving. In this 
same year, 1801, Senor Dionisio Vega, by authority of the teachers of 
the capita], appealed to the press on behalf of the teachers in the 
rural districts, to v/hom arrears amounting to $117,957.50 in gold were 
owing, a deficit wiiich had been accumulating since 1887. It would be 
unjust not to speak of the generous efforts of the present civil governor 
to ameliorate the situation, but it still remains an anomaly, and the 
larger j)art of the teachers have been obliged to sell their vouchers at 



960 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

an enormous discount in order to live. "To my mind, liowever," con- 
tiuues Scnor Rodriguez, "• the saddest and most dangerous feature of this 
state of things consists in the strange apathy of our public and their 
ignorance of the real state of things, which I can only explain by the 
profound iutellectual lethargy and prostration of the lower classes, 
who are plunged in the heavy sleep of ignorance, while we take no 
heed of their dangerous situation. This indifference is unjustifiable, 
for, better or worse, we shall have to form our people out of this con- 
tingent, and unless we can raise them from the slavery of ignorance, 
now that they have been freed from bodily servitude, our country will 
soon resemble a nation of some primitive people. An odious distiuction 
has come to exist in our system of education between the rich or pow- 
erful and those who have been disinherited by fortune. For the first 
class there are the university and the institutes in the various provin- 
cial capitals; for the second, a situation has grown up which renders 
education nearly impossible. The son of the rich or well-to do family 
has the incentive of a future to spur him on to acquire an education, 
while the child of poor parents has neither this incentive nor auy means 
of attaining an education. It is true that the education of the better 
classes is profoundly utilitarian and egotistic, frankly calculated to fur- 
ther personal interests, the door to higher aims, which should animate 
our country, being closed; but the situation of the jdebeian classes is 
lamentable, as every notion of school, teacher, pupil, moral influence, 
and instruction is gradually becoming extinct. It may be said that 
within a short time our entire elementary education will consist of the 
most rudimentary ideas of mechanical reading and writing. Reading 
and writing imply a deep signification when they are combined with the 
development of the mind and conscience: otherwise, they are dead 
things. Formerly the rich and poor child went to school together for 
a certain i)eriod, a circumstance which had inestimable advantages 
both for the general social conditions of the country and because it 
opened the way for talent. Many of our men of letters came from the 
1 )wer classes." 

The present law provides that the government shall have the direc- 
tion of the schools, including their morals, hygiene, and instruction, 
text-books, and everything affecting them, while the city authorities 
are to pay for their support without any participation in the manage- 
ment. Such a system is likely to produce real antagonism between 
the municipal corporation and the government, because the former are 
not eager to pay for services which they can not control. This explains 
the constant struggle with the town authorities to pay the teachers' 
salaries. But in order to manage the schools properly, which the local 
authorities have to support, the government needs skilled persons who 
understand the problems and necessities of education in its technical 
aspect, who are called inspectors, and whoform an intermediary between 
the governmerit and the schools. But in point of fact, so profound is 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 961 

tlie neglect of tlie elemeutary schools, there have heen no inspectors, 
either provincial or general, for niaity years; so that the government is 
absolutely ignorant of the inner life of the schools, their needs, their 
regular operation, and tiie rnorc insignificant matters that affect their 
life. 

The only activity in ])romoting- the welfare of the schools is mani- 
fested by the diligeisce of the teaciiers. The slight influence which 
the i)rovincial deputies can exert is shown by the failure to create 
recently a normal school at Havana, notwithstanding' the efforts of 
Don Jos6 Maria Carbonell, senator from the university. To make some 
amends for such deficiencies, the law has created local and provincial 
juntas, the former of which exercise the right of visiting the schools, 
fixing" the examination days, and seeing that the schools are in opera- 
tion regularly, and in short, are a, kind of intermediary between the 
teachers and the heads of families. But as the government appoints 
the persons vrho, in the minds of the heads of families, are an integral 
part of this macluuery, it results that such appointments, in the midst 
of the i>revalent profound indiU'erence and atony in educational affairs, 
are without intluence upon the real and effective life of the schools. 
The darkness of the situation becomes intense when we reflect that 
elementary education has had no regulation for years which should 
direct and arouse to i)ractical life the force naturally inherent ia the 
institutions. Organization, system, method, all are absolutely neglected 
or ignored. 

Senor Rodriguez asks what remedy can be found for this condition 
of things, anil finds it in an increased political activity and the press. 
By political life he means particularly a greater initiative on the part 
of the municipalities, and an amplification of their functions, or 
greater decentralization. 

As the municipalities are poor, and irregular in their payment of 
teachers' salaries, he thinks that both this misfortune and the want of 
activity and interest can be cured by the action of political parties in 
the better sense of the word; and this political activity, he says, has 
had a great influence upon the elementary schools in France, in Spain, 
and in Italy particularly, where the principles of the French revolution 
have penetrated. The school, he continues, when well organized acts 
spontaneously in forming upright minds, guiding the conscience, pre- 
paring men for the work of life, nourishing- the mental faculties, and 
assisting the individual development, cultivating, in short, these three 
aspects of the individual, viz, the man, the citizen, and the produc- 
tive agent. There is, he concludes, no other alternative; but either 
the care of producing these results must be left entirely to the gov- 
ernment or the people must take the initiative and assume the 
charge of such importance themselves. Every civilized country must 
necessarily choose the latter course. In that case, with the desire or 
ambition to accomplish this purpose, the political party to effect it will 
ED 98— —Gl 



962 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

rise, wliose activity is inseparably conuectcd with everything afiectiiig 
the general interest of the people. A i>oliticaI party, once formed, the 
l)roraotion of the elementary schools should be included in its pro- 
gramme, and the Avhole ayuntamiento, or council, with its alcalde, and 
the corporations connected -uith it, should be asked for their i)rofession 
of faith. And an enlightened iiress should advance these interests and 
be their safegnard. The paper closes with a reference to the public- 
spirited men and women in Cuba who have devoted themselves (o 
establishing schools or improving education, as has already been noticed. 
In an appendix Seiior Rodriguez gives the law regulating primary 
instruction, with his own observations, showing deficiencies iu the vari- 
ous articles. The -date of the law is not given. The articles are as 
follows : 

Art. 2. Elementary ius;ructiou shall comprise Cbristiaii doctrine and sacred 
history, reading, Avriting, principles of grauiniar -with exercises in orthography. 
Elementary arithmetic, including coins, weights, and measures. Elementary les- 
sons in agriculture, industrj-, and commerce suited to the locality. 

Art. 3. Instruction which does not include all these subjects shall he regarded as 
incomplete for the purposes of this plan of studies. 

Art. 125. In every town of 500 souls there shall ho a public elementary school for 
boys and another for girls, even if incomplete. Incomplete schools for boys shall 
he allowed only in smaller towns. 

Art. 126. In towns of 2,000 souls there sliall be two complete schools for boys and 
two for girls; iu towns of '1,000 there shall bo three, and so on, increasing the 
schools by one for each sex for every 2,000 inhabitants, including private schools; 
but one-third of the whole shall always bo public schools. 

Art. 127. In the provincial capitals and towns of a population of 10,QOO one; of 
the public schools shall be a high school. 

Art, 131. The governor-general shall provide infant schools iu the department 
capitals and towns of 10,000 inhabitants. 

Art. 13.3. In towns of 10,000 inhabitants there shall be anight school or a Sunday 
school for adults, and besides, a class iu linear drawing and ornamental drawing, 
with apijlication to the mechanic arts. 

Art. 131. The supreme government will promote the education of the deaf, dumb, 
and blind by providing at least one school for them in Havana. 

Art. 137. In order that those who intend to devote themselves to primary educa- 
tion may obtain the necessary instruction, there shall be one normal school in the 
cai>ital of each province. 

Art. 111. The general government will promote the establishment of normal 
schools for female teachers for imi^roviug the instruction of girls, and will establish 
model schools where it is convenient, under certain requirements which the regula- 
tions will determine. 

Upon the foregoing Senor Rodriguez remarks that no provision is 
made iu the appropriations for carrying out the requirements of the 
law. There was in 1890 only one high school for boys and another 
for girls in Havana, one for boys in Guanabacoa, one in Matanzas, one 
in Puerto Principe, and one in Santiago de Cuba, six in all, the law 
requiring that there should be one for every 10,000 inhabitants. There 
was not one infant school in the island, under the law, but one under 
the auspices of the Real Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad de Habana 
had been successfully conducted for several years. IsTeither was there 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 



963 



a night scliool nor a drawing school founded by the nmnicipalities, but 
the Eeal Sociedad Economiea established that kind of instruction in 
1878 for adult whites and blacks. There is also a school of mechanical 
arts in Havana. As to normal schools, there is also no provision for them 
in the apiiropriations, yet since the twenty-two years during- which the 
normal school of the JEscuIapiau fathers has been closed, which turned 
out accomplished teachers, the State has established two such schools 
in Havana, one for male and the other for female teachers, but none of 
the provinces have one. It is the glory of the Sociedad Economiea to 
have installed a preparatory night school for male and female teachers 
which is free, and is supported by different members of the Society of 
Friends of the country. We give the summary of Senor Eodriguez : 



Province. 


Population. 


dumber 
of schools 
incom- 
plete. 


Number 

of private 

schools. 


Elemen- 
tary 
Sfliools. 

112 
35 
69 
79 

22 

38 


Eli'iiien- 

tary 
schools 
requiied 
))y law. 


Elenieu- 

tary 
schools to 
be estab- 
lished. 




452, 028 
229. 761 
259; 754 
351, 265 
68, 881 
271, 010 


80 
99 
74 
95 
11 
72 


354 
26 

112 
93 
35 
76 


524 

274 
300 


412 




239 




231 




404 325 


Puerto Priucipe 


74 52 
294 1 256 








Total 


1, 632, e09 


431 


698 


355 


1,870 ! 1,515 









This table shows that in a population of 1,432,199' there were 355 
elementary schools in 1891, and that 1,515 were still to be established 
to conform with the requirements of the law, which calls for 1,870. 
These figures show also that there was one elementary school to 4,03G 
inhabitants. 

We take, at the risk of some repetition, the following additional notes 
on public elementary education in Cuba from the translation of a book 
by Kaimond Cabrera, with the title, Cuba and the Cubans. The author 
says, " Until the last century was far advanced the Cubans had not a 
single public institution where they could have their children taught to 
read and write. The first school was that of the Bethlehemite Fathers, 
in Havana, and was established through the generosity of Don Juan 
F. Carballo. He v/as, according to some authorities, a native of Seville, 
and according to others, of the Canary Lslands. He repaid thus gen- 
erously the debt of gratitude he owed the country where he had 
acquired his weciltli. Already, in tlie sixteenth century, a philanthro- 
pist of Santiago de Cuba, Francisco Paradas, had afforded a like good 
example by bequeatliing a large estate for tlie purpose of teaching 
Latin linguistics and Christian morals. The legacy was eventually 
made of avail by the Dominican Friars, who administered it, but when 
the convents were abolished it was swallowed by the royal treasury, 
and thus the beneficent intentions of the founders were frustra'ed, to 



'The figiiies iu the columii " ropulation " add up to 1,632,699, but as SeFior 
Rodrio-uez'uaes 1,432,699 in his discussion, tlie error cau not be determined. 



964 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

the permaueiit danger of the uufortuiiate country. Ouly these two 
institutions, due entirely to individual initiative, are recorded in our 
scholastic annals during the three first centuries of the colony. The 
thirst and scent for gold reigned supreme. The sous of wealthy fami- 
lies, in the absence of learning at home, sought schools and colleges in 
foreign parts (in this century). On their return, with the patriotic zeal 
natural to cultured men, they endeavored to better the intellectual con- 
dition of their compatriots. This enforced emigration of Cubans in 
quest of learning was fought against by our government. The children 
of Cuban families were forbidden to be educated in foreign countries. 
This despotic measure was adopted without any honest elibrt being 
made to establish schools for instructing the children of a population 
already numbering nearly 500,000 souls. 

"The Sociedad Economica was founded iu 1 793, during the time of Las 
Casas, whose name has always been venerated among Cubans. Then, 
as now, the members of this association were the most talented men of 
the country, and their best efforts were directed toward promoting 
public instruction. It gave impulse and organization to the school sys- 
tem in Cuba; it established inspections, collected statistics, and founded 
a newspaper to promote instruction and devoted its ])rofits to this 
cause; it raised funds and labored with su(;h zeal and enthusiasm that 
it finally secured the assistance of the colonial government and 
obtained an appropriation, though but of small amount, for the benefit 
of jtopular instruction. 

'' In 1703 there were only 7 schools for boys in the capital of Cuba, in 
which 408 white and 144 free colored children could be educated. 
From this privilege the slaves Avere debarred. The seven schools 
referred to, besides a number of seminaries for girls, afforded a means 
of livelihood for a number of free raulattoes and some whites. The 
schools were private undertakings paid for by the parents. Only one, 
that of the reverend Father Senor, of Havana, was a free school. Read- 
ing, writing, and arithmetic were taught in these schools. Lorrenzo 
Lendez, a mulatto of Havana, was the only one who taught Spanish 
grammar. The poor of the free colored classes were on a par with the 
slaves. The Sociedad Economica founded two free schools, one for 
each sex. The bishop, Felix Jose de Tres Palacios, nullified the laud- 
able efforts of the country's wellwishers by niaintaiiiing that it was 
unnecessary to establish more schools. From 1703 to 1893 the society 
was unable to accomphish even a part of its noble purpose — it was 
found impossible to obtain an official sanction of popular educa- 
tion. In 1817 there were 90 schools in the rest of the island — 19 dis- 
tricts — all, or nearly all, founded by private individuals. In 181G the 
section of education of the Sociedad Economica was established. It 
afforded a i^owerful impulse to the cause of education, thanks to the 
influential support of the governor, Don Aliquando Ramirez. Tlie 
schools improved, the boys and girls, both white and black, were 



EDUCATION IN CUBA AND PORTO RK'O. 



965 



taught separately, literary contests were opened, annual examinations 
were made obligatory, prizes were distributed, and a powerful incentive 
was created am(mg all classes for the cause of education. But the con- 
cessions attained for the society by the intluence of Eamirez were 
revoked by royal order of February, 181*4. In this year the munici- 
p;iiity of Havana loaned the Sociedad Patri<3tica -$100 for schools. 

" In 1826 there were only 140 schools in the island, of which IG were 
free, and in 1827 the 8o:-iety obtained -$8,000 per annum for the estab- 
lishment and maintenance of new schools. In 183(] there were only 
9,082 children receiving" eletnentary instruction in the whole island. In 
18G0 the number of schools had increased to 283 for whites and 2 for 
colored, yet the attendance was proportionately less than in 1836, owing 
to the increase in population. Popular instruction was neglected or 
despised by deputy governors (military). 

" The reformed course of studies of 1863 did not improve the condition 
of the schools, and the secretary of the governor made recommen- 
dations that virtually tended to keep the population in ignorance in 
order to keep it Spanish. In 1883 the schools numbered as follows: 



Province. 



Havana 

Matanzaa 

Pinar del Kio 

Santa Clara 

Puerto Principe .. 
Santiago de Cuba 

Total 



lie. 


Private. 


173 


101 


95 


22 


82 


18 


103 


18 


24 


4 


58 


21 



Vacant. 



184 



67 



'" But the teachers were not paid and public instruction was neglected." 
This work gives a list of names of wealthy Cubans, both men and 
women, who have founded colleges and schools, and of societies which 
have the promotion of education for their object. The author adds 
that the clergy are indifferent in this matter. There is not one parish 
which supports a free or endowed school. 

The preamble of a decree reforming education in Cuba was published 
hi the Ofiicial Gazette of Havana November 17, 1871, and a translation 
of it is given in an appendix in the work just quoted. On account of 
its historical interest we give a summary of a portion of the preamble. 
It states that the insurrection of 1868 was due to the bad system of 
education; that while the old methods were slow the new are prompted 
by eagerness for hurry, a:!d the child is taught a number of things, 
whereas its mind is unable to comprehend many things at a time. A 
number of subjects should therefore be suppressed. Balmes is quoted 
as the autiiority for the psychology and pedagogy of the preamble. 
The latter goes on to say that this haste to teach many things has made 
religious instruction secondary to that of the arts and sciences, a fatal 
error which has produced flital consequences. It refers to statistics to 



966 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-9S. 

show that Clime has increased -witli education, and states that Aime 
Martin found the remedy for this evil in educating- instead of merely 
instructing. But as there were many religious sects, jiartin unf;)rtu- 
nately selected an irreligious religion as the means of edneaiiiig, and 
consequently there was no decrease in crime, SeHor Lasagra is 
quoted to prove that suicides are more numerous in Protestant than 
in Catholic countries, and more so in the capitals than elsewhere. This 
is due to too great individual freedom of thought and consecuu'nt 
changes in social and economic conditions, which have ])roduced dissat- 
isfaction, despair, and suicide. Philosophical and religious sects have 
multiplied, and the multiplicity of these has always and e\erywhere 
produced doubt and skepticism, which in their turn have engendered a 
materialism wliose only offspring is disbelief in virtue and morality. 
Under its inilucncc some are tortured with unhappiness, without hope 
of the future, while others are filled witli envy, lleligious instruction 
had been too much neglected or too carelessly performed, and the real 
reme<ly would consist in Christianizing or Catholicizing education, by 
putting the government and municipal machinery of education in the 
hands of the religious teaching orders, when the evil would disapi)ear. 
It goes on to say, witli severe condemnation of the schools where they 
had taught, that inan}^ of the insurgents had been teachers, and men- 
tions particularly tlie school formerly conducted by Jos6 de la Luz. 
Instruction must be supi)leraented by moral and religious education, 
and great care should be taken to prevent access to (politically) evil 
literature. Even iu text-books of elementary geograi)hy, it declares, 
have wicked doctrines been inserted. In one of them we read that the 
greatest event of the present century in America was the revolt of 
Bolivar. "See under what seductive forms the minds of children are 
predisposed to treason." The preamble concludes by recommending 
a greater scope to religious instruction, the suppression of private 
teaching, and placing t^ie plans of studies under the Catholic clergy. 

There is a number of learned societies in Havana, and Mr. A. P. 0. 
Grifiin, of the Library of Congress, has published a list of 33 whose 
publications are received in Washington. By means of these publica- 
tions and separate works, like tlse History of Pezuela and the Natural 
History of Sagra, the history of Cuba, its natural history (land and 
marine fauna, mineralogy, and botany), ethnology, and geology have 
been made known, while the meteorology of tlie region has been inves- 
tigated by the observatory, whose work is Icnown all over the scientific 
world. The number of medical journals is noticeable, and Vol. XXXIV 
(August and September, 1SS)7) of the Anales de la Eeal Sociedad de 
Ciencias Mcdicas, Fisicas y Xaturales (the only specimen at hand), con- 
tains four articles on medical subjects, viz, a criticism by Dr. Santos 
Fernandez upon certain experiments with the X rays upon a blind per- 
son, another upon the bacillus of the tuberculosis of Koch, and tlie two 
others are experimental studies connected with typhoid fever. The 



EDUCATIOISr IN CUBA AND PORTO RICO. 967 

romaimng article of the number is a long aud masterly account of the 
discovery of argon and prediction of. helium, by Br. Gaston Alenso 
Cuadrado. Tlie Eevista Cubana contains able articles upon general 
jihilosophical, historical, and other subjects, besides those of especial 
interest on Cuba. The paper upon elementary education by Sefior 
Eodriguez, which we have used, was i>ublished in that review. Judg- 
ing from the titles of the periodicals we should say that there is liitle 
of mechanical or electrical engineering or "applied science*' in them, 
for which there is probably no demand in Cuba, while the exhaustive 
mathematical treatment of such subjects (esj)ecially that which was 
"made in Germany," like much recent "American science") has 
been imported into the United States in the last twenty-five or thirty 
years, where there is a field and demand for it. But for a population 
of 200,000 souls, including many blacks, the number of scientific, educa- 
tional, and literary periodicals in Havana is remarkable, and they 
contain A'aluable original articles. 

To sum up, therefore, the educational condition in Cuba, the evi- 
dence shows that the higher education is of a superior character; the 
study of the humanities has borne its usual fruit in literary taste 
and culture, and Cuba has given birth to i)oets who have attracted 
attention and won the praise of European critics. In recent years the 
sciences, with such technical applications as are adapted to the needs 
of a communit}' which is not a manufacturing one, have been culti- 
vated, and the enlightened i)art of the public has been kept informed 
of European philosophy and progress — all this with scant aid from, 
and sometimes despite the opposition of, the government. Elementary 
public instruction, on the other hand, lias been and is in a very back- 
ward state, partly on account of the social condition of the island, but 
principally on account of the apathy and often the actual hostility of 
the government toward any serious attempts at improvement. 



968 



EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-P8. 



II.— THE PHILIPPINES. 

The (character of the population of tlie PLilippiue arcliipelago is 
vastly dififerent from that of Cuba and Porto Pico. In the latter col- 
onies the aboriginal inhabitants had become extinct by the end of the 
first century of Spanish occuxjancj', and their place as laborers was 
taken by negro slaves, whose supply was rei)lenished from time to time, 
but particularly between 1762, the period of the English occupation of 
Havana, and the middle of this century. The whites, however, form 
the majority of the population in Cuba, while in the Philippines the 
vast majority of the population is composed of the native races, the 
Spaniards and other whites forming only an insigniticant proportion of 
the whole. The population of the group is given at a little over 7,000,- 
000, while the total civilian Spanish population, including Creoles, 
amounts to less than 10,000. The native population is composed of 
two grand divisions, the Tagales and the \'isayas, v/ho are of Malay 
stock, and a small number of jSTegritos v/ho, it is agreed upon all hands, 
were the original inhabitants of the islands. But the mingling of the 
different Malay tribes with the Xegritos and with each other, in the 
long course of centuries, has produced innumerable varieties of dia- 
lects and customs, character and form, to which the Chinese, who, 
aside from their mestizos, now number 100,000 souls, have contributed 
their share, until a large number of tribes is now recognized with dis- 
tinct languages, which run into dialects' so subdivided that among the 
wild tribes of the ISTegritos and other mountain men, isolated family 
groups have been found with a dialect of their own. Jagor (Peisen 
in den Philippinen), following a Spanish authority, gives a list of over 
thirty languages and dialects spoken in the different islands.' The 
Tagales and Visayas, who are Christianized, are all called Indians by 



1 In the Histoiia General de Filipinas, Tome III, p. 535, Senor Montero y Vidal 
gives tlie following interesting table of the Philippine dialects and the number of 
natives using them, published in 1869. But there is necessarily much difficulty in 
obtaining such statistics, and diftereiit authors give different iigures: 



Dialects. 



Vis<aya 

Taaalo 

Cebuano 

Ilocano 

AMcal (Bicol)... 

Pangasinau 

Painpango 

Zambal , 

Pauayauo 

Ibanag 

Il'iigao , 

Aeta (Kegritos) 

Coyuvo 

Igorrote 

Itaves 

Gaddan 

Benguetano.... 



Kiimber of 
natives. 



2,024, 

1, 216, 

385, 

.'354, 

312, 

263, 

193, 

68, 

67, 



Dialects. 



Tingnian 

SiilHu 

Cbaiuoi'io 

Mauday a 

Ilongote 

Ibilao 

Mauobo 

Malangue 

Calamino 

Agntaino 

Daday a 

Igorrote del Abra 

Igorrote de ia Gran Cordillera 
Carolino 

Total 



!N umber of 
natives. 



7,059 
5, 928 
5,360 
4, 104 
3, 932 
3,845 
3,103 
2,893 
2, 744 
1,961 
1,846 
1,071 
644 
580 

5, 075, 680 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES. 969 

tlie Spaniards. Tliere are, besides, Moliaramcdaus in tlie Sulii archi- 
pelago and in Mindanao, wiio have been the inveterate eiiemies of both 
Spauairds and. "Indians" ever since the discovery of the ishmds. They 
are called "Moros" by the Spaniards, a name given them Avhen the 
memory of the wars with the Moors in Spain was still fresh. 

A writer in the Catholic World for August, 1898, divides the population 
as follows, as regards their religion: Nominally under the order of the 
Augustines, 2,082,1.'{1 ; of tlie Eecollects, 1,175,15(5 : of the I'^ianciscans, 
1,010,753; of the Dominicans, 099,851; of the Jesuits, 213,005; and 
those under the secular clergy, 907,294, a total of 0,15S,250 Christian- 
ized Indians, leaving a million or more for the wild tribes and the few 
]!Sregritos. 

The conquest of this i)opulation by a few hundred Si)aniards in the 
sixteenth century was remarkable for the ease with which it was 
accomplished and the means which really effected it, for it was the 
monks rather than the soldiers who won the islands for Spain, and 
they have retained the spiritual and intellectual control of them ever 
since. Long before the Spaniards discovered the group the natives 
had acquired the social constitution which they still retain in a meas- 
ure and which is thus described by INIallat (Les Philippines, Paris, 
1840) : The Philippine islanders, says that author, had no kings, properly 
speaking, but in each village there were certain individuals more 
powerful and influential than the others, who were distinguished either 
by birth or by persorial qualities. They could make war and had the 
title of rajah, which was hereditar3\ They were a kind of petty feudal 
chiefs who looked out for the interests of their subordinates and the 
latter, in their turn, followed the rajah to war or to sea, or worked for 
him in the field, ia fishing, etc. Tliere were also chiefs, or governors, of 
larger territories. Sla^'ery existed at the time of the coniquest, all cap- 
tives being reduced to that condition, and the Spaniards endeavored to 
abolish it. There were, therefore, three classes among the natives — 
nobles, i^lebs, and slaves. The natives were deeply sui)erstitious, but 
without any formulated religious beliefs; they feared and worshii)ed 
any objects in nature which they imagined could injure them — the sun 
and moon, lightning and thunder, rocks on which they might be 
wrecked, certain birds, etc. — in short, their religion was a fetichism, 
but they had no priesthood like the Buddhists, for example. They 
lived as they do now, on fi.sli and fruit, both of which are in profusion, 
cultivated rice, and had trade with China and Japan. The military 
conquest was easy because there was no national life, no conscious 
unity of race or government. As Semper (Die Philippinen und ihre 
Bewohner) explains, as soon the Spaniards had achieved a few victories 
over the village chiefs the followers of the latter yielded their homage 
to the conquerors as they had been accustomed to do to the native 
victors, the Spanish officer merely taking the place of the conquering 
petty chief, and they came to receive his commands. On the other 



970 EDUCATION RErORT, 1897-98. 

Laud, the ceremonial of tbe monks appealed for several ] casons to the 
imagination of the natives and they were eager to adopt or assimilate 
the religion which it represented. With comparatively few exceptions 
they have never understood the symbolism but have remained half 
Christian aud half pagan to this day. They merely regard the Chris- 
tian prayers and tests as superior "medicine" (as an American Indian 
would say), to their own, and Semper states that the priests complained 
to him that the same men would be devout Christians one day and the 
next would pray to their "Anitos" for a good harvest. Ancestor wor- 
ship was and still is practiced among the wild tribes, and as to educa- 
tion the "Indians" of the different islands had alpliabets of their own 
when the Spaniards arrived and could read and write, a^5 they can and 
do to this day. Semper remarks that up to the beginning of this century 
the Spanish in-iests in Miiulanao made use of the native alphabet even 
in their official business. The natives had no literature, however, and 
therefore no history, and no tradition as to their origin, which has been 
worked out by ethnologists by the natural-history method. They vrere 
not in the "stone age'' like the American Indians, but had iron-pointed 
spears and arrows and smelted copper, an art which is still practiced, 
not by the more civilized agricultural Tagales and Visayas, but by the 
mountain tribes in Luzon. The tobacco and coffee culture was intro- 
duced by the monks, and the former now forms a great source of wealth 
to the religions houses. The Negritos and the wild tribes, who are 
described as remontados, i. e., ])eoples who refused to stay in the plains, 
cultivate the soil, and pay tribute to the Spaniards, but took to the 
mountains, still use the poisoned arrows of their ancestors. They are 
intractable, make raids upon the settled "Indians," and are perpetnally 
at war with each other. They are miners in a primitive way, and bring 
in the gold which eventually fiuds its way to the Chines-a merchants in 
Manila and on the other islands. After the partial military subjuga- 
tion of the country there was a second and more complete conquest 
of the tractable imitative "Indians" by the monks, whose intellectual 
or spiritual superiority the natives speedily recognized and acknowl- 
edged, and they soon came to take the place of the original "dattos" 
or petty chiefs, a position they retain to this day, the hereditary pos- 
sessors of that authority still appearing in the political capacity of 
"gobernadorcillos," or petty governors, while the padre is the real 
center of the village community, its spiritual head, counselor, and 
adviser, as well as the collector of spiritual fees of all kinds. 

The history of the Philippines from the time of the first conquest is 
not remarkable for its political interest. It consists of contests with 
the piratical "Moros," the successful repulse of the great Chinese i)irate 
invasion in 1575, attacks by the Dutch, who were carrying the revolt 
of the Netherlands against Philip II wherever there were Spanish colo- 
nies upon which to wreak revenge; an occasional ca])turc by the Eng- 
lish of the ships that made annual trips to Acapuico from Manila (one 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES. 971 

Englisli ship sailed up the Thames AYitli sails of damask, and lier cargo 
brought several linndred tbousaud dollars, all from the i>luuder of this 
Mauila fleet); earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and insurrections 
among' tlie natives, wbicli make up the story until 17G2. In that year 
Manila, like Havana, was taken by the English and held for a year, 
until the declaration of peace restored the city to the Spaniards. The 
significant events were the insurrections. The Spanish colonial policy 
began its work early. In 1581 the "encomienda" system was practiued 
in the islands as it had been in America, but the natives refused to be 
enslaved wliolesale, or to submit to practices which were alien to their 
ancient village or clan system, and revolted. The opposition of the 
clergy, too, was so active that news of the contention reached the ears 
of the King, who issued orders abating the ''eucomienda" system and 
strongly favoring the natives. The protest of the religious orders was 
so earnest that they petitioned to be allowed to return to new Spain 
rather than witness the extortion of the ofiicials. The King, with the 
knowledge of what had haj)pened in America and the old jiiotests of 
Las Oasas in mind^ and with the general outcry of Europe against the 
enormity of the Spanish practice ringiiig in his ears, was prompt to 
sui>press the repetition of an outrage that had brought the Spanish 
name into disgrace. The later insurrections were not serious until 
we come to the present century, when the causes which have been 
pointed out in the article by Blumentritt given above had come into full 
operation. It is very noteworthy, however, that a widespread insur- 
rection took place when the English captured Manila, both among the 
"Indians" and the ChiriCse, In the early part of this centurj^ serious 
insurrections broke out from time to time, and in 1872 the revolt of 
the native troops at Cavite was the most dangerous of all until the 
final outbreak of 189(5. 

Of the intellectual capabilities of the Indians of the Philippines (i. e., 
the Christianized natives), Blumentritt, the German ethnologist, who 
has studied them, has a high opinion. He says, in the article before 
quoted, that they are distinguished by a higher capacity for education 
than the so called civilized Indians of Central America and the Andes 
region. The number of Philippine Indians who attend the secondary 
schools and the university is relatively very large and from them have 
come politicians (he gives the names of Dr. Kizal, Marcelo H. Del Pilar, 
and Mariano Ponce); artists lilie the painter Juan Luna y Novicio, 
whose picture "Spoiiarium" was brought out in the Leipzig lUustrirte 
Zeitung; ethnographers like Isabelo de los Reyos y Fioi'entino; and 
linguists like Pedro Serrano Laklar, who are all known outside of their 
own country.' 



' Among the suspected persons in the insurrection of 1896 was the artist Luna (a 
mesti/oj, whose large historical paintings (such as that which shows the dragging 
ont of the bodies of dead gladiators from the arena of the Colosseum, and bloody 
scenes from Spanish history) were much admired at Madrid. The Dr. Eizal men- 



972 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

The Cbiiiese mestizos have played a conspicuous part iu tlie colouies 
ou accouiitof their wealth and inherited business enterprise and talent, 
which make them one of the most progressive elements of the popu- 
lation. There are no red-skins in the islands, but pure-blooded Malays 
and their m.estizos, who resemble the Japanese, with whom they are 
allied by race, not only in their physical api)earance, but in their 
mental chamcteristics. A Tagale said, "We are Japanese with a 
dash of Spanish blood ajul of the Catholic faith; we represent prog- 
ress; the vSpauiards are only laudatores lemporls aeii — the backward 
element." 

Another competent observer of the Tagal character was Jacobo 
Zobel de Zangroniz, a biographical notice of whom appeared in the 
Deutsche Rundschau in 1897. He was born in Manila, of a wealthy 
German father and Spanish mother, received his edncation in Germany 
and Spain, where he took his university degree, and became interested 
in archeological pursuits. He spent several years in Europe, following 
his favorite studies and attracting favorable notice by his publications, 
before returning to Manila. He was active there in piomoting the 
literary and scientific as well as commercial movements after 1870, 
which brought him into conHict with the monks, and he was imprisoned. 
He owed his release to the personal intervention of the German minister 
for foreign aflairs. He remarks that the numerous other Malay tribes 
of the archipelago are inferior to the Tagales both physically and men- 
tally. Two thirds of the Tagales can read and about half of tliem can 
write. They are a cheerful, peaceable people, are disposed to enjoy- 
ment, and have an eye rather to pleasures and things that are beau- 
tiful and attractive tlian to the useful and profitable, in which they 
are totally unlike their Chinese neighbors. They work enougli to sup- 
ply their needs — an easy task, because of the superabundance of rice 
and fish — and are willing to work just a little more, to provide brilliant- 
colored clothes, festivities, etc. Art, especially music, is their i)assiou. 
The village vagabond will sit all day over his violin or liute, and even 
the meanest village has one or more bands of 20 or .30 pieces, and 
they will play much l>etter than the regimental bauds of the surround- 
ing English colonies. They like the dolce far niente, revery, melan- 
choly, but are also eager to hear stirring tales of adventure, new 
discoveries and inventions, mythological and ghost stories. Their 



tioneiT i;i the text, who Avas n, savaut and known both for his scientific and literary 
attainments, also lielongod to the insurrectionary party. His novel Noli mo Tangere, 
Novela Tagala (Avith a motto from Schiller) was printed at Berlin in 1886. It is 
described as presenting, although in an exaggerated way, the misery of the natives 
in the islands, their harsh treatment in the Spanish prisons, and the pernicious 
influence of the priesthood upon them, especially the women. There was for a long 
time uncertainty as to Rizal's fate. One rumor was that he had died on shipboard, 
while another Lad it that he had been appointed surgeon to the Spanish troops in 
Cuba. The truth is, however, that he was shot in Manila by the nulitary authori- 
ties, his fate thus recalling that of Placido, in Cuba, fifty years before. 



EDUCATION IN THE FHILIPPINES. 973 

superstition is ratber pructical tliau religious, by wliicli is meant that 
they believe less in si>iiits than In the magical action of healing herbs, 
in the laying on of hands in disease, etc., and therefore they were early 
attracted by the (Jatholic Church. Unfortunately they know very little 
of Spanish, so tl>at they have no means of improving themselves by 
reading, their material in this respect being almost exclusively prayer 
books, a few stories about the saints, etc. Wlienever any other kind of 
reading in their language comes in their way, such as tales of chivalry 
an.d enchantment — even quack advertisements and the like — they 
devour them greedily. In another passage in his letters, Zobel, speak- 
ing of the relation of the natives to the monks and the tobacco 
monopoly, says that the latter were attempting to represent both to the 
colonial and the home governments that they alone can offer a sure 
g support to the Government, since they can keep the mass of the natives 
in check by their moral influence without otlier aid. Tliis claim, he 
i continues, was only true to the extent that the natives, timid, indiffer- 
i ent, and lazy as they are, fear the white monies and pay them a super- 
: stitious obedience, but do not love them. In the provinces where 
i tobacco is grown the natives are not allowed to cultivate anything else. 

■ The State sells it for cash, but pays the farmers in i)ai)er v.hich is not 
] redeemable for two, three, or even four years, so that they are com- 
I pelled to sell their certificates to the Chinese or Spanish usurers at a 
". great discount. Even this is borne patiently by the easy-going people. 

But religious fanaticism, which is not rare among the lower native 

■ priests (who are excluded from all higher spiritual dignities), sometimes 
\ leads to dangerous revolts of the natives (as in 1842), whose customary 
1 mildness and indolence are liable occasionally to change into blind 
\ fury. 

1 As has been said, the monks played a conspicuous part in the acqui- 
] sition of the islands for Spain. They came as missionaries with the 
1 conquistadores and soon became the leaders of the natives, and have 
I remained ever sin.ce in possession of nearly all the parishes. As in the 
■I other colonies, so in the Philippines, tiiey brought with them the edu- 
■\ cational system with which they had been familiar, and very soon after 
J the settlement of Manila they founded colleges and other educational 
and charitable institutions, which have survived until now and to 
which is due the literary and scientific activity, which, beginning with 
a history of the islands, accounts of the " martyrdoms " of mission- 
aries, etc., has produced works on the natural history of the islands, 
their ethnology and history, including dictionaries and grammars of 
the native languages. The latest fruit of the scientific activity of the 
Jesuit fathers and tlse most important and best-known scientific insti- 
tution in the Philippines, and perhaps in the whole East, is the 
famous meteorological observatory of Manila, which was founded in 
18G5, and now has one of the most complete equipments for meteoro- 
logical observations in the world. An imi)ortaut i)ractical service which 



974 EDUCATION EErORT, 1897-98. 

the observatory renders shipping is the warning of approaching- hurri- 
canes, which it is enabled to give by means of its branch stations at 
different points in several of the islands. The Jesuit Father Faura, 
who is so well known for his meteorological work and has been for a 
longtime in charge of the observatory, began forecasting the weather 
as early as 1879. Expeditions have been made under his direction all 
over the archipelago, with a view to making magnetic and other obser- 
vations. A report upon the terrestrial magnetism in the Philippines 
was prepared by P. Ricardo Cirera, S. J., the director of the magnetic 
section of the observatory, to be presented to the meteorological con- 
gress at Chicago. It contains, besides, some historical matter and a 
mathematical discussion of methods, tables and charts showing the 
isogonal and isoclinal lines, magnetic meridians, isodyuamic lines, and 
diagrams showing the magnetic variation at IManila, and the pertur- 
bations. The college of Santo Tomds was founded by the Dominicans 
in IGll and was formally opened in 1019. Po])e Innocent X conferred 
the title of university upon it in 1045 with the two faculties of theology 
and arts, which were subsequently enlarged by Clement XII by the 
addition of the faculty of law in 1734. The King became the i)rotector 
of the university in 1080, and it received the additional title of '' royal" 
in 1785. Its courses and faculties were reorganized in 1870 with the 
title of University of the Philippines.^ It had 581 students in 1845 and 
nearly 1,000 in 1858, at the time of Sir John Bowring's visit. Since the 
reorganization in 1870 and the separation of secondary instruction from 
the university the attendance has become subdivided, but no statistics 
are available to siiow the attendance in the last few years. The repre- 
sentative in Washington of Aguinaldo, the insurgent leader in the 
Philippines, who is himself a graduate of the university, says that the 
total number of graduates is 11,000. Although the university is the 
most important institution, it is not the oldest in Manila. In 1585 the 
King ordered that a college should be established in which the sons of 
the Spaniards of the archipelago could be educated under the direction 
of the Jesuits, but the institution— the college of San Jos;^ — was not 
opened until 1001. Its first students were sons or relations of the early 
authorities of the country. In 1030 the college of San Juan Latran 
was founded by a charitable individual for the orphans of Spaniards. 
The founder became a Dominican and the institution remained in charge 
of that order. Besides the inmates, a large number of boarders, both 
"Indians "and mestizos, received instruction there until both it and 
the college of San Jose were included in the institute in 1870. In 

1 These historiciil notes ou the educational institutious in the Philip])ines are taken 
from the Historiii Gciioral de Filipinas dosdo el descuhriiiiiento de dichaa islas hasta 
nuestros dias, por D. Jose Moutero y Vidal, Madrid, 1887; Mallat, Les Philippines, 
Paris, 1846; Semper, Die Philippinen und ihre 15e\vohner, Wiirzhnrg, 1869; Jagor, 
Eeiseu in don Philippinen, Berlin, 1873; Memoria sohrc Filipinas y Jolo, por el 
Excmo. Senor D. Patricio de la Escosura; edited by D. Francisco Canamaquo, 
Madrid, 1882. 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES. 975 

1G32 the college of San Isabel, for Spanish orphan girls, was founded, 
and is now in charge of the sisters of charity. Not only were colleges 
and schools established in Manila, but in other islands. Thus the Jesuit 
Sanvitores established schools in tlie Ladrone Islands, and a seminary 
for the education of the sons of the natives in 1009, in support of 
which the Queen, Marianria of Austria, contributed 3,000 pesos annu- 
ally, for which act of charity the name of the islands was changed from 
the Ladrones to the Mariannes, which the^^ bear now. 

It was HOC only the Government and the Spaniards who founded 
educational institutions, however, for in 1091, as Montero's chronicle 
states, a mestiza named IgnaciadelEspiritu Santo founded the beaterio 
de la compania, which still exists, and which Avas soon attended by 
many Indian girls and mestizas: other beaterios were in existence 
later, and the oldest convent school, that of Santa Poteuciana, was 
founded in 1580. 

In 1707, when the Jesuits were expelled from the Philippines, they 
had 4. colleges in M;inila and in Cavite, 1 in the island of Cebu, 1 in 
Iloilo, 1 in the island of Mindanao, and 2 in the Marianne Islands, 10 
in all. (Montero, II, 183.) 

In 1770 a royal decree began the effort, which has been repeated ever 
since without effect, to make Sjoanish the common oflicial speech of the 
islands, and in 1781 the Sociedad Economica was established, having 
for its object improvements in the industrj^and commerce of the country 
and incidentally of the schools. The first i)ax)er or periodical appeared 
in 1811, w^hich contained principally translations of articles in English 
papers concerning the war in Spain against the French, the courage of 
the Spaniards, etc. The next jieriodical appeared in 1821, which had 
only a short life, while the Sociedad Economica founded a mercantile 
paper in 1824 that lived for ten years. In 1837 the Flora de Filipinas 
segiin el sistcma sexual de Linneo, by Fr. Manuel Blanco, was published 
in Manila, which is described as an important contribution to the 
natural history- of the islands. In 1842 the periodical Seminario Filipino 
begati its exivstence, and contained European and Asiatic news, besides 
local and mercantile notes, and a daily paper was started in 1846, which 
lived four years. In 1852 the Jesuits were reinstated, and sisters of 
charity were directed by royal order to go to the Philippines and take 
charge of the beaterios there. They arrived in 1862, and have charge 
of a dozen " colleges " and charitable schools for girls in Manila with 
(in 1885) 1,030 pupils. At the same time the fathers of St. Vincent de 
Paul came to the islands, and now have 4 colleges and seminaries in 
Luzon, Cebu, and Iloilo, with a total attendance (in 1885) of 1,580 male 
and 40 female pui)ils. 

In 1855 a commission was appointed by royal order to draw up regu- 
lations for primary education, in accord, as far as possible, with the 
Spanish law of 1838, and to report upon the expediency of establishing 
a normal school at Manila. In 1861 a school of botany and agriculture 



S76 



EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 



was establislied at Manila under the inspection of the Sociedad Eco- 
nomica. In 1863 plans of primaiy instruction which had been approved 
for Cuba were sent to the governor of the Philii')pines for liis examina- 
tion. The plans proposed by the minister for the colonies for secular- 
izing the University of Manila met with the most violent opposition from 
the religious order which had had charge of it, and its opposition was 
seconded by other persons, so that the plans as contemplated could 
not be carried out. It is important, however, to show what changes 
were intended, and a summary is here given of the preamble and i:)lans 
of study proposed, which are taken from the Diccionario de legislaciou 
de instruccion publica, por Eduardo Orbaneja. 

The minister for the colonies, under date of October 2, 1870, proposed 
that instruction should be given at the University of Madrid in Tagalog 
and other studies which would give information about the Philippines 
and the English and Dutch East India possessions and their methods 
of government, especially for the benefit of those who intended to enter 
the colonial service. A decree of the same date established the plan 
proposed. On November a royal decree established an institute of 
public secondary instruction in Manila with the title of Philippine 
Institute. The phm of studies was — 



Spanish and Latin grammar. 

Elements of rhetoric and poetry. 

Elements of physical geography. 

Elements of dt-scriptive geography in 
general and of Spain and the Philip- 
pines in particular. 

Universal history— History of Spain and 
the Philippine Islands. 



Arithmetic and algebra. 
Geometry and plane trigonometry. 
Elements of physics and chemistry and 

of natural history. 
Psychology, logic, and moral philosophy. 
General outline of anatomy, physiology, 

and hygiene. 



Tiie same provision was made here as in Cuba for the verification of 
degrees from private institutions. 

The studies which fit for the industrial professions in the same insti- 
tution included — 



Mercantile arithmetic. 

Bookkeei)iug and accounts. 

Political economy and mercantile and 

industrial legislation. 
Geo""raphj^ and commercial statistics. 
French, English, Tagalog, and Visayog. 
Surveying. 



Spherical trigonometry. 
Cosmography, pilotage, and maneuvers. 
Theoretical and applied mechanics. 
Physics and chemistry applied to the arts. 
Topographical drawing audhydrography. 
Lineal and ornamental drawing — land- 
scape, figures, and painting. 



This institute absorbed the college of San Jose and municipal athe- 
neum, college of San Juan Latran, nautical academy, and academy of 
drawing, painting, bookkeeping, and languages. On the same date 
the decree changed the title of the old University of Santo Tomas at 
Manila to that of the University of the Philippiues. The faculties of 



EDUCATIOX IN THE PHILIPPINES. 977' 

law and medicine \Yere reorganized, tlie latter containing- tbe following 
studies : 

Descriptive aiul gem i;il auatomy, two Surgical pathology, witli operations, 

courses. ! bandagiug, etc., one course. 
Exercises iu osteology and dissection, Medical pathology, one course. 

two courses. ■ Obstetrics and special pathology of 
Physiology, one course. ■women and children, with clinics, one 

Public and private hygiene, one course. | course. 

General pathology, with clinics and j Medical and surgical clinics, two courses. 

pathological anatomy, one course, i Legal and toxicological medicine, one 
Therai)cutics, materia medica, and writ- course, 

ing recipes, one course, i 

The pliarniaceutical course was also reorganized. 

On December 5, 1870, the minister for the colonies drew up a long 
exposition of the history, condition, and needs of public instruction in 
the rhilipx)ines5 which recites the early activity of the Augnstines, 
Dominicans, and Jesuits in education, es])ecially iu founding the college 
of Santo Tonii'is in IGll and of San Jose in IGOl, but points out that 
by the x>rocess of absorx)tion by the religious orders education became 
concentrated iu their hands. That while every acknowledgment sliould 
be made of their services in earlier times, their narrow, exclusively 
religious system of education, and their imperviousness to modern or 
external ideas and influences, which every day became more and more 
evident, rendered secularization of instruction necessary. He cites the 
attempts in this direction nuide since 1835, which had been only partly 
successful, on account mainly of want of persistence in following them 
up and tlie political changes of the times in Spain. He goes back to 
1785, wlien the first classification of studies M^as made in the archipehigo,, 
and when secondary instruction included a very modest amount of the 
humanities, consisting for the most part of tedious Latin taught with 
great prolixity, some scholastic philosophy, mostly intended to prepare 
for the study of casuistic theology, and some extremeh^ rudimentary 
mathematics. 

While this part of education remained in the hands of the clerical 
element, the laity, esi^ecially the association called thoSociedad Ecouo- 
mica, established the nautical and accountant schools, the school of 
drawing and j)ainting, and other no less valuable institutions, which 
were at first maintained by private funds, although subsequently by 
the State. (These were all united iu the institute.) The university 
instruction was entirely insufficient. There was no faculty of medicine 
or pharmacy, very little natural science, and less of history, philology, 
and linguistics. This is now corrected. The minister renuirks that it 
would be entirely Utopian to attempt to give the Government charge 
of all the education, because of the social condition in the Philippines 
and the supremacy and power of the monks. 

On October 29, 1875, a royal order was issued regulating the courses 
iu the university and i^rescribing jjlans of stitdy. 
ED 98 62 



978 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

The faculty of law was mncli enlarged to cover, besides the Koman 
and canon, civil, mercantile, and criminal law, political economy, statis- 
tics, and general and Spanish literature. 

How man}' of these reforms were carried out eventnallj' can not be 
decided from any evidence now available. The minister who succeeded 
the author of the above sensible proposition had the order revoked as 
far as secularizing was concerned. 

As to primary instruction, it has been shown that the Philippine 
islanders could read and write their own languages when the Spaniards 
arrived. According to a table in the book of M. Alfred Marche (Lucou 
et ra.laouan. Six annees de voyages aux Philippines. Paris, 1S87), 
there are five alphabets in use in the arcliipelago. All travelers state 
that there are schools in every village, whicli arc under the control of 
the priests. Good observers have noticed the aptitude of the natives 
for instruction. Thus, Mallat states that the children begin very early 
to make their letters in the sand or on leaves. Some of them, he goes on 
to say (he was writing in 1842), become distinguished calligraphers, 
and can imitate all kinds of writing, drawing, and juMnted characters. 
He relates a story of a missal which was copied bj' an " Indian " and 
sent to the King of Spain. It was so well done that it was impossible 
to distinguish it from the original. They copy maps, also, with great 
exactness. It follows that instruction among the Indians was far from 
beiiig backward when compared with that of the lower classes in 
Europe. iSTearly all the Tagales can read and write. However, the 
sciences, properly so called, have made little progress among the 
Pliilippine islanders. A few of the mestizos have a slight tin(;ture of 
them, and those of the Indians who have taken orders know Latin. The 
best educated are without doubt those who, having studied at the uni- 
versity of Santo Tom;is, have become lawyers. Among them can be 
found advocates worthy to be compared with the most celebrated in 
Spam. As to literature, there is a Tagale grammar and a dictionary 
and a combined grammar of the Tagale, Bicol, Visaya, and Isinay lan- 
guages. These are ail published by tiie monks at the Santo Tonuis 
X)ress. There are several public printing offices in Mauiia. The literary 
works proper consist mostly of poems and tragedies in Tagale. The 
former are sometimes on very grave subjects, such as the Passion, aiul 
the tragedies are very long.^ There are also short poems and songs, 
of which both words and music are national, and the Indians can write 
the music with wonderful ability. They are all musicians, and some 
of them can play live or six instruments. There is not a village, how- 
ever small, where tLie mass is not accompanied by music. The choice 
of airs is not always the most edifying, and one sometimes hears 
waltzes and airs from the Prench opera bouffe in the church es,- 

The military music of the garrison at Idanila and the large towns 



' M. Marclie, forty years after, relates that a tragedy whirli was porformt^d in a- 
village Avliere ho was staying lasted two or three days. 

'^.Vt. ^larche hoard airs from La Fille de Madame Angot played at a funeral. 



EDUCxVTION IN THE PHILIJ'PINES. 979 

of the provinces is carried to an astonishing- degree of perfection, so 
that there is nothing- better of the kind in ]\radrid. The Indians play 
from memory the overtures of Eossini and Meyerbeer. Semper, writ- 
ing in 18G0, says of edncation among the natives : ''The Christian Span- 
iard has not been able to exert much more influence of a spiritual 
than of a political nature upon the 'character of the natives. Popular 
instruction was formerly and is now entirely in the hands of the priests. 
Excepting the professors of common and Eoman law, all the chairs of 
the university of Santo Tomas in Manila are in the hands of the priests, 
who naturally arrange not only the theological lectures, but those upon 
metaphysics, physics, and logic as well, according to the principles of 
the Catholic Church. In the provinces every village has its public 
school, in which instruction is obligatory; but, besides reading and 
writing, only Christian doctrine and church music are taught. This 
instruction, moreover, is by no means generally given in Spanish; at 
least, the general introduction of Spanish as a school language is still 
so recent that it will be long before the Spanish officials will be able to 
converse ^even with their subordinates in Spanish. On the east coast 
of Mindanao, one of the oldest and most settled provinces, the native 
dialect was exclusively used until forty or iifty years ago, and the 
priests used the old JMalay alphabet until the begiuniug of the century 
even in their official business. The number of natives — the Spaniards 
call them 'Indians' — who can read and write is tolerably large; but 
owing to the total unreliability of all statistics on the subject nothing- 
accurate can be said. In 1803 the (xovernment attempted to make an 
enumeration of the poi)ulation and, incidentally, to note the number 
of those who could read and write. The fact that the result was never 
published seems to confirm the opinion that an unsatisfactory condition 
of things was found. 

"The surprising facility with which Christianity sx)read over the 
islands, even in the beginning of the conquest, leads one to suspect that 
it only served as a cloak for the ancient religious customs, and, indeed, 
partly amalgamated with them. Trustworthy monks still complain that 
the same men go to church one day to pray to their Christian God and 
the next offer sacritices to their heathen idols or 'Anitos' for a good 
harvest. In some places there has even been a backsliding into the old 
heathen times." 

Jagor, another competent observer, says of the natives in the Cama- 
rines, a province of Luzon, that they have schools in every village. 
The teacher is paid by the Government and usually receives $2 a month 
without board or lodging. In large towns the salary rises to .$3.50 a 
month, but then an assistant must be paid. The schools are under the 
supervision of the local priests. IJeading and writing are taught, the 
copies being set in Spanish. The teacher is required, it is true, to teach 
his pupils Spanish, but he does not understand it himself, while the 
officials do not know the native language, a condition of things which 
the priests have no power or inclination to change, because it increases 



980 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

their power. Only those Indians know Spanish who have been in the 
service of Europeans. At first a kind of religious pi iuier is read in the 
native language, and later Christian doctrine is taught. On the aver- 
age, about half of all the children go to school, ordinarily from their 
seventh to their tenth j-ear. They learn to read and some learn to Avrite 
a little, but soon forget it. Only those who become clerks can write a 
running hand, but the}^ usually have a very good hand. Some jiriests 
do not allow boys and girls to attend the same school, and they pay a 
special female teacher •$! a month. The natives learn counting with 
difficulty and use shells or stones as a help, piling them in little heaps, 
and then counting them out. 

In 1890, according to the Gran diccionario geografico, estadistico, e 
historico de Espana y sus provincias de Cuba, Puerto Rico, Filipinas, 
etc., edited by Eafael del Castillo, there were 1,016 schools for boys 
and 592 for girls in the archipelago, with an attendance of 98,701 boys 
and 78,352 girls. 

For the following additional information we are indebted to a brief 
account of the educational facilities of the Philippine Islands by Mr. 
Alex, A. Webb, United States consul at Manila, which was written in 
1891: Mr. Webb states that the general government appropriated 
$104,731.50 for schools in 1890, of which sum the normal schools received 
$10,520. The salaries of the teachers were, $800 for the director; pro- 
fessors, $800 ; teachers of drawing, $G00 ; teachers of ordinary branches, 
$100, and assistants, $120. The two directors of the school of drawing 
and painting, which was established in 1875, were paid $1,200 each by 
the government. By royal decree of October 1, 1890, the School of Arts 
and Sciences was established at Manila. Here are taught languages, 
bookkeeping, higher mathematics, chemistry, natural history, mechan- 
ics, political economy, mercantile and industrial legislation, drawing, 
modeling, engraving, wood carving and a?\ the trades. 

A school of agriculture was established at Manila July 2, 1889, for 
the purpose of giving those natives who had acquired a common school 
education a theoretical and i^ractical education in agriculture and hor- 
ticulture. It opened with 82 students and last year (1890) had 50, but 
it is hoped and expected that there will be an increase in interest 
among the natives as soon as the work of the school can be extended. 
Similar schools have been established in the provinces of Isabela de 
Luzon, Ilocos, Albay, Cebn, Iloilo, Mindanao, Leyte, and Jalo. They 
are supported entirely by the government and managed by the priests. 

Mr. Webb mentions the Eoyal Society of Friends of the country, 
Avhich was founded in 1813 for the purjiose of encouraging the interest 
in the arts, sciences, commerce, and industries, and says: " It is claimed 
on its behalf that it has accomplished a vast amount of good, but there 
is not that degree of energy and activity manifested in its work to be 
seen in similar organizations in some other countries." It has accumu- 
lated a library of about 2,000 volumes on the arts and sciences, natural 
history, and agriculture. 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES. 981 

()u tlie ITtli of August, 1887, a Eoyal decieo was issued establisLing 
a public uniseuin and library in jNIaiiila, under the management of a 
board of <jivil and military oflQcers to be appointed by the govornor- 
geueral of the islands. Work has been commenced upon the j)roject 
and it bids fair to develop into a very creditable institution in a few 
years. 

This review of the educational condition of the Philippines would 
not be complete without some fuller account of the monks, whose x)ower 
and position in the islands is an anachronism, recalling the middle ages. 
The complaints which are now apparently with justice urged against 
them should not cause us to forget their early servi(;es to the natives 
and to civilization. We are accustomed to hear of tra\elers and scien- 
tific men venturing everywhere in furtherance of fads or inipelled by 
curiosity, or the vice of competition, and risking their lives from these 
purely selfish motives, but the motives which urged Catholic priests in 
the sixteenth century to go all over the world and encounter death 
everywhere, from the woods of Canada to the remotest parts of China, 
were self-sacrifice and devotion for what they believed to be the si)irit- 
ual welfare of savages and heathen. In the historical paper belbre 
cited Blumentritt says of the monks in the Philippines: 

They wou for themselves, in early times, great gratitiule Irom the natives by pr<itect- 
ing them from the government officials, which was increased by admitting them to 
religious orders. But this happy condition was changed in the present century, for 
when the orders were abolished in Spain, the Philippines offered an asylum to the 
crowd of European novices whose numbers soon closed further admission to the 
natives. Since that time, the Philippine monks have been European Spaniards, who 
are often the orly white men in the country districts, and who, being the only rep- 
resentatives of the ruling race, have made use of tliat position, in fiict if not with 
right, and constituted themselves the rulers of the land. In the fear that a liberal 
government might deprive them of their last refuge, the Philippines, by handing 
the parishes over to the (native) secular clergy, the Spanish monks began to pose as 
the ojily reliable support of Spanish rule in the archipelago and to throw the suspicion 
of independence upon the secular clergy. So great is the ignorance of the Spaniards 
of the affairs of the archipelago that this suggestion was easily entertained, although 
all insurrections had been suppressed, not by the monks but by the government. 
Their jiower was further increased by the money they circulated -in Spain and tha 
fear of the Spanish Government that they might place their wealth at the disposal 
of the Carlists. 

These monks have been the enemies of every administrative reform which the 
colonial ministers have promised or effected from 1868 until the present time, and 
they have consequently and naturally appeared as the enemies of all progress and 
improvement in their country, not only to the secular clergy, but also to all the 
other inhabitants of the islands. At their instigations all natives of superior intel- 
lectual attainments who would not play the hypocrite were persecuted and trans- 
ported, so that there was a fearful sense of insecurity all through the country. 
What kind of a spirit actuated them is best shown l)y the fact that they accused 
the Jesuits, who are highly esteemed, of liberalism and so brought suspicion and 
distrust upon the teachers who were educated in the Jesuit teachers' seminary. 

The Filij)ino8 started a journal in Madrid, called La Solidaridad, which contended 
for constitutional reforms. But the undertaking was unsuccessful, because the 
mass of the Spanish nation showed absolutely no inclination to trouble itself about 
the affairs of its A.siatic colonies, and the monks were able to purchase enough 



^82 EDUCATION REPORT, 1897-98. 

newspapers to combat or render ridiculous the efforts of tlie Filipinos. Indeed, 
the latter Avere told tliat political rights are not obtained by begging, but by 
fighting, to which their loader, Marcelo H. del Pilar, answered that the day when 
the Filipinos, no longer trusting the justice of Spain, should take up, arms, would 
be a day of sorrow for the Spanish natiou, for it would no longer be a question of 
the granting of political reforms, but of l)reaking away entirely from the obstinate 
and deaf mother country. This prophecy was soon fulfilled. Up to the present 
time only the educated and rich inhabitants of the islands had taken p:irt in the 
efforts at reform, while the mass of the people stood aloof. The greed of the monks, 
however, Avho had acquired immense landed estates, induced them to raise their 
rents until their tenants and the small farraei'S, in despair, rose in the revolt of 
August, 1896, which Avas directed less against the Spanish Government than the 
monks themselves. 

The conclusion, wliicli is obvious from the observations and history 
which have been presented, is that the few Spaniards in the rhilip- 
piues, while they have not made a radical or decided change in the cus- 
toms and habits of thought of the natives, have nevertheless imposed, 
their religion upon them to a considerable extent, have taxed them 
successfully, and have them under military control. The humanities, 
under the conduct of the priests, have borne their usual fruit in civiliz- 
ing the comparatively few natives or mestizos who have been brought 
nnder their influence, until they have produced statesmen, artists, and 
literary men who have become known in Europe by their merits. It is 
clear, also, that while the natives of the archipelago have a greater 
power of resistance to alien iniluences than those of the American 
continent, the greater portion of them show decided and superior in- 
tellectual capabilities. 



Work-son Ciiha and J'orto Ii'ko whicli iccre used in iivvparinfi ilic account of education 

in those islands. 

Abbott, Abiel. Letters from Cuba. Boston, 1829. 

Ampere, J. J. A. Promenade en Amerique. Paris, 1835. 

Cabrera, Raimundo. Cuba y sus jueces. Ilabana, 1887. 

Cabrera, Raimundo. Cuba and the Cubans. Philadelphia, 189G. 

C(decci6n de docnmentos ineditos relativos al deseubrimicnto, contiuista y organi- 
zacion de las antignas posesioncs Espanolas do ultramar. Jladrid, 1885. 
(Published by the Royal Historical Society.) 

Cnyas, Artuxo. The new constitutional laws for Cul>a, etc. New York, 1807. 

Dana, R. H. To Cuba and back. A vacation A'oyage. Boston, 1859. 

Diccionario de legislacitni de instrucciou publica, por liduardo Orbaneja. 

Ferrer y Rivero, D. Pedro. Tratado de la legislacion de primera instrucciou. 
Madrid, 1897. 

Fisher, Richard Swalnson. The Spanish West Indies. Cuba and Porto Rico. New 
York, 1861. 

Fronde, James Authonj'. The English in the West Indies. New York, 1888. 

Humboldt. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the new con- 
tinent during the years 1799-1804. Translated by Helen Maria Williams. 

Laliga y Monies. Ley de instrucciou publica. Madrid, 1897. 

Liras. La primera ensefianza en la isla de Cuba. Habana, 18!>3-91. 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES. 983 

Liins. Legislaciuii de primenx ensefianza vigente en la isla de Cuba. Habaua, 

1895. 
Merlin, Maria de los Mercedes do Jariico, Comtesse. La Havanc. Paris, 1844. 
Mitjanes Anrelio. Estndio sobro el moviaiieuto cientffico y literaiio do Cuba. Obra 

pustuma publitada jior suscripcion popular. ITabana, 1890. 
Moreno, Juan Macho. Couipilaciou le<fislativa dc primcra euseuanza de la isla de 

Puerto Eico. Puerto Rico, 1893. Apendico primero, 1898. 
Peznela, Jacob de la. llistoria do la isla de Cuba. Madrid, 18G8. 
Real Universidad.. de Habana. jSIeniorias. Habana, 1889-90. 
Rodriguez, Manuel Yaldes. El problema de la educaci()u. llal>ana, 1891. 
Romero, Waldo Jimenez de. Espaua, sus monumentos y artes. Barcelona, 1887. 
Spanish rule in Cuba. Laws governing the island. Pamphlet. Translation of 

review published by the Colonial Office in Madrid. New Vork, 1896. 
Littell's Living Age, 1849-50, vols. 22-26. 
North American Review, 1849. 

Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. 88, Deceiuber 15, 1851. 
Knickerbocker, vols. 24, 25, 26. 
Chambers' .Journal, vol. 32, November 5, 1859. 
Articles in the Nineteenth Century, Contemporary Review, aud Fortnightly Review, 

June, July, August, 1898. 

JJoj-A-s consulted on the I'hUipphie Islands. 

Orbaneja, Eduardo. Dicciouario de legislacion de instruccicui publica. Rafael Del 

Castillo. Gran dicciouario geografico, estadistico y historico de Espaua y sus 

proviucias — Cuba, Puerto Ifico y Filipinas. 
Cariamarque, editor. Meraoria sobre Filipinas y Jolo, redactada eu 1863 y 1864 por 

el Excmo. Senor D. Patricio de la Escosura. Madrid, 1882. 
Montero y Vidal. Historia general de Filipinas desde el descubrimiento de dichas 

islas hasta nnestros dias. 3 vols. Madrid, 1887-95. 
Semper. Die Philippinen und ihre Bewohner. Wiirzburg, 1869. 
Jago;-. Reisen in den Philippinen. Berlin, 1873. (Contains the geology of the 

islands by J. Roth.) 
Mallat. Les Philippines. 2 vols. Paris, 1846. 
Marche, Alfred. Lufon et Palaouan. Six anndes de voyages auF Philippines. 

Paris, 1887. 
Deutsche Rundschau, 1897 aud 1898. 
Contemporary Review, Nineteenth Century, Fortnightly Review, and Review of 

Reviews, July, August, and September, 1898. 
Worcester, Dean C. The Philipi)iue Islands and their people. New York, 1898. 
La Girouiore, Paul de. Vingt aunces aux Philii)piues. Souvenirs de Jolo. 

Paris, 1853. 



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